Lana by Kristy Evans

In “As Much Truth as One Can Bear” James Baldwin wrote that “the multiple truths about a people are revealed by that people’s artists – that is what the artists are for.”  This is part of why I love to share the thoughts of worthy artists in my interviews.  SubtleTea welcomes a particularly thoughtful and stylistic artist this time around: Lana Gentry.

DH: I’ve had many Muses, but dammit, I’ve never been a Muse. But you, you’re a living, breathing one! And there are hundreds of portraits of you done by artists from here to everywhere to prove it. You seem humble about being pretty, but let’s be honest here, you’re easy on the eyes (and a former model). Despite your response to praise, beauty is a game of both canvas and palette, and beautifying oneself is an art in itself. How and when did this enviable phenomenon of Musedom originate – and is it enviable? What is it like to see yourself through other artists’ eyes?

LG: I was far too round and short for any runway modeling. LOL. I did some pin-up stuff in my youth to survive. I don’t feel any shame about that.  As far as the portraits go, in all humility, I have many friends who have been painted and drawn quite a few times. Of course it is true that I have amassed a few portraits.  The real answer is that I do not know why the phenomenon is in full swing even now, but I have a few theories I will address in a moment.

First of all, I am not that easy on the eyes. I am rife with imperfections. I feel grateful to be presented in glorious ways: normal and defiling ways. I am not thin, I am not young, my teeth are crooked and gapped, I am not very tall. I stand at 5’3″. I meet no conventional standard of beauty.  I believe the portrait phenomenon is comprised of a few things. I have always surrounded myself with creative thinkers. I always find myself commenting on artists’ works online, chatting them, hanging out with them in real life, writing about them, interviewing them, and sometimes creating portraits as well. I have a very strong connection to artists. I always have; it is a lifestyle. I came from a family of gifted artists. This was true in my immediate family and also my extended family. Both of my parents had amazing creative abilities. I would say the portrait thing has been going on for about nine or 10 years now, if you are referring to the online collection of portraits. I also have portraits of me done by family members and intimate friends, so in that regard, perhaps longer. I do not post them all, but I post the ones sent to me online or portraits the artists have approved for public consumption. I’ve lost count, but it currently exceeds 350. 

DH: Despite my usual hesitation to classify stuff, I’d put your visual art somewhere between Lowbrow and Romanticism. Sensuous, but intellectually seasoned Art Nouveau, mixed with Sendakan fantasy, Surrealism, psychedelia, and an old-school political-cartoon vibe. It also has a slight Giulio Campagnola flavor. I like how you incorporate handwritten text (a la iconoclast Ray Pettibon and mystic William Blake), whether it’s an epigraph or something from your own mind. How would you describe your work? Why are you an artist rather than a lawyer or a riveter?

LG: Well I doubt very seriously I could ever pass the bar. LOL! Although I do enjoy a good debate. My art has been categorized in a number of ways. As classifications go, I hear more than anything else, self-taught or outsider art, folk art, dark art etc.  My work has even been likened to prison art. My father was a convict at some point and an artist as well, so maybe that contributed. These categorizations do not offend me. I’m lucky anyone gives a fuck to hate or love me or my work. I’m not defined by classification. I see my own art as more of a personal type of journaling. When I am inspired by people or life events (both good and bad), I am inclined to document those experiences. Because my creativity mostly excludes conscious influences, I find it hard to categorize it myself. On the other hand, if people wish to categorize it for shows, reviews, articles and so on, I humbly accept any observations about what it is that I do.

 But I Do Remember by Lana

DH: I know you’re an admirer of Ayn Rand’s work. Like me, you seem to savor the honey and spit out the bees in you admiration. Sure, her puritanical rigidity, rude infidelity, apparent inability to admit failure, and reduction of fallen-short folks to infidels are turn-offs, but her foibles remind us that even anti-utopian utopians aren’t perfect. I think much of the vehement bashing of Rand (often by lazy bums who haven’t really read her stuff) borders on psychosis. Often she’s mistaken as a Libertarian (an affiliation she despised) or a staunch conservative, while she was anything but and would hiss at GOP pols (“the hippies of the right”) who mix lukewarm Objectivism with collectivist compromise and religion (also despised by her) in their flimsy rhetoric and actions. I think she was ever tormented by America’s muddy waters of morals, economics and politics, fearing a repeat of what the Bolsheviks wrought in her native country.

Bottom line: she said that “there’s no such thing as a worthless human being – unless he makes himself such.”  What is your attraction to Rand, Lana? How do you react to folks who criticize that attraction? How do parts of her philosophy influence you?

LG: Yes I definitely agree that her native country and what she observed had a profound impact on her life and work. I stumbled upon her philosophical fiction in my early twenties and I always saw much of what I did enjoy as more corroborating than influential. I think once her name became affiliated with certain circles (as you have mentioned) this amped up the hatred for her, although this hatred always existed for reasons explained in her works. Her works in fact are about that very hatred that exist in men who have a particular distaste for the individual. Rand’s radical and obvious ideas reject mysticism and blind allegiance to anything. 

I like the term “savor the honey and spit out the bees”.  I do not agree with everything Ayn Rand ever said, nor can I necessarily be in keeping with the stark manner in which it could sometimes be delivered. She was hotheaded on occasion while struggling to have a clear view of reality. She was human.  She was passionate and although she fought her emotional side, she did have one.  She had emotions, although she did not believe they were a good instrument for measuring right from wrong. Having said that, I do admire a lot what she has written. 

To understand my deep appreciation for many of her quotes and writings, you would have to understand my dark past.  I’ve lived in the prison of poverty, addiction, and homelessness. I’ve lived among people who were violent and absolutely unaccountable for anything. There was a lack of reason in my household growing up. Although I love my parents and have made peace with both my living father and my deceased mother, I yearned for stability and accountability. They had virtues and vices like all parents, but I longed for the opportunity to change my reality. It was confirmed through some of the writings of Rand that I did not have to submit to a life of masochism and servitude. In my case I had a mind and an unrelenting fervor to escape my misery and I knew that I could. The thought of taking control of my life to the degree that I could, was frightening but also invigorating and exalting. All the women I have admired have been women who have stepped around obstacles to achieve their goals. These would also include Oprah Winfrey, Eleanor Roosevelt, Martha Stewart, Wendy O. Williams, Camille Paglia, Radcliffe Hall, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Virginia Woolf, and so on. I’ve always been drawn to tough women. I like the ones who step out of line to proclaim their existence. 

I don’t bother much anymore with the criticism railed at me for appreciating some of Ayn Rand’s work. Mainly because it is so obvious that many of the people criticizing me for appreciating certain aspects of her work have based their contempt on non-contextualized quotes, false quotes, agenda-driven motives, and blatant misunderstandings. They rarely venture into the realms of true philosophical debate. Some do and some genuinely disagree philosophically. I can respect opposing views. I cannot rightfully assault people or deem them inept for disagreeing with me while simultaneously requesting their respect for my views.  When certain people make an attempt to engage me though, it usually takes hours just to unweave the tapestry of lies they’ve been fed. They just call me names, and post links to bullshit sites.

Here is a dismantling of some myths that exist about Ayn Rand: Ayn Rand did not support a military draft. Ayn Rand did not revile poor people. Ayn Rand did not support the idea of not collecting social security or disability. This myth has been used to create an illusion of hypocrisy by saying she was a hypocrite for receiving Social Security. First of all I’m not sure it was ever firmly proven that she collected Social Security, although I would not doubt it. She was a part of that system by virtue of living in America. Secondly, it is reiterated in her material, that men who have contributed to society and had their funds taken by legal force through the IRS, deserved the opportunity to reclaim some of what was rightfully theirs. What I appreciated about her work was the idea that blaming others was unfruitful, using emotions as primary tools of cognition was dangerous, and her shining a light on the idea that the world was filled with people who were driven by jealousy, undeserved power, and the need to destroy genius. She acknowledged other malevolent forces, which have historically and consistently crumbled societies. 

Ayn Rand was a staunch atheist, and she constantly rallied for a separation of church and state. She was pro-choice as well. She did not view the “rape scene” as a rape scene in The Fountainhead. She was creating a scenario of tension and passion. She wrote one of the best essays I have ever read about the stupidity of racism.  She opposed nepotism, monopolies and cronyism. She believed that money was not the corruptor of man: that he was either immoral or he wasn’t.  These are some of her virtues, not vices. But you never read about these online. You read about her associations to Libertarianism and Conservatism. She had very strong views that opposed so many ideas in all parties.  Was she perfect? No she was not perfect. But I say show me your heroes, the personalities behind any kind of art, writing, acting, or anything else that you admire.  Show me your music collection, your most appreciated books and films. Show me your heroes and let me do a background check. Let me then decide if I deserve to be spoken to the way people have spoken to me online about quoting Ayn Rand.  I no longer discuss it online, not because I am afraid but because it is an exhausting full time job that creates a lot of division, rage and misunderstanding. If you hate me for appreciating the works of any artist, writer, poet, philosopher, musician or whomever, that’s too bad. Open up that indoctrinated steel trap you call a mind. Better yet, go fuck yourself. 

DH: Despite its flaws, Atlas Shrugged, the culmination of Rand’s ever-reiterated moral philosophy, belongs up there with books such as 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, The Wanting Seed and A Clockwork Orange. The novel’s central hero, John Galt, is the apotheosis of the author’s deepest fetishes and highest ideals, including her girlhood crush on The Mysterious Valley’s iron-willed Cyrus Paltons and The Fountainhead’s Howard Roark.  However, Galt is the most boring element in the novel. Rand considered art to be “a concretization of metaphysics,” and I think he is only that, not a character. “You don’t exist,” Rand wrote to herself in the 1920s.“You are only a writing engine.” Galt is an Objectivism engine, a capitalism engine, Rand’s statue-like savior. “Who is John Galt?” All A, no non-A. No nuance, misgivings or ambivalence. 

I know that you prefer The Fountainhead to Atlas Shrugged, and Howard Roark, Galt’s more-blooded prototype and analogue (naïve idealization?) of architect Frank Lloyd Wright. (If anything, she should be recognized for being perhaps the strongest endorser of modern architecture and Wright’s renaissance in the last century.) Tell us about your love of The Fountainhead and your hots for Roark. Does his uncompromising defense of creative integrity affect your own artistic ethos? Also, spiel on the significance of your Ugly and Reprehensible piece, which features a nude self-portrait flanked by the heads of Rand and the intellectual heir, Dr. Leonard Peikoff. 

LG: Many anti-Capitalists are still enjoying Capitalism every day when they wake up. Of course they’ve not lived under Communist or tyrannical regimes. They stand at a distance with expensive lattes proclaiming the virtues of Communism or other evil methods of governing. They’ve not been blocked from selling or making their art or any fucking thing else. They haven’t been to prison or killed for making art. No one’s chopping their heads off for being female, atheist or gay. They aren’t slaves to tyrannical governments the way other people are. They think they are – but they aren’t. Those Neo-Americans, how they long to suffer as much as others do. 

Everyone is A and non-A. I will not answer “Who is John Galt?” because it is the hook that leads to the book. As far as my preference, thanks for doing your homework. I do prefer The Fountainhead to Atlas Shrugged. It has a more natural flow in my mind.  I am not so much influenced by Rand’s character Howard Roark, but, rather, I’m psychologically corroborated by the conviction and integrity his character held with regard to his own creative vision. He had no interest in duplicating existing works. He believed in an honest exchange among men and he chose to work in a rock quarry while maintaining those creative ethics on his journey. He rejected the notion of consistently working in his field until he achieved a state of no compromise.

Both books push the idea of creativity and original thought. They heed a warning about a world to come, that does not allow a man to simply be himself. The idea is that men have so often traded their individualism for collectivism under the guise of being noble. In The Fountainhead, there is a strong message about the rejection of collectivism versus the embrace of individualism. It rejects sheepish thinking which includes religion or any non-religious dogma that resembles it. The Fountainhead illuminated the idea that man’s personal desires, visions, and achievements had the right to stand on their own without contamination or compromise. I would think that even if people hated the works of Ayn Rand, that they could appreciate my appreciation for such an idea.  Are these views popular? Well, fuck no they aren’t. Then again, life’s not a popularity contest. I wasn’t put on this earth to kiss anyone’s ass. That’s not my view of a happy life.

You referred to the significance of my work Ugly and Reprehensible, which includes images of Rand and Peikoff.  This came from a personal experience that happened many years back. I had drawn a very small portrait of Ayn Rand, and I believe I named it Patron Saint of Reason: replacing the religious, mystical figure with one of reason and rationality, Ayn Rand. My friend who was working with me at the time helped me send out letters to many galleries, organizations, collectors to bring light to my work. One such letter was sent to The Ayn Rand Institute because it was related. I knew that Ayn Rand as well as her followers had specific views on art. So I am accountable there. This was one area with which I never completely agreed with the Objectivists anyway. So Dr. Leonard Peikoff, an author, co-writer, intellectual heir and friend of the deceased Rand, returned a scathing and cruel reply via secretary that addressed my portrait, calling it “ugly and reprehensible.”  I didn’t mind the “ugly” as much as the “reprehensible”. 

That “reprehensible” cut me to the quick. It implied that I had some evil intent with regard to doing the drawing. He wasn’t an art scholar or instructor but reading those particular words would not have been easy coming from anyone at that point in my life. Since the organization was so firmly tied to the idea of individualism, it really seemed like a strange thing for him to say.  So that’s why I did the piece, as an answer to what I thought and felt was a hypocritical and unnecessarily cruel note from Peikoff’s secretary, quoting Peikoff. I have since stomached much more criticism and it has trumped the criticism given by Peikoff. I am not unaffected by what people think, but I am much less affected by the things people think and say than I used to be. I understand that he has every right to his opinion, just like anyone, whether it makes sense to me or not. It’s an opinion. I had to also consider that he adored and knew this person. But yeah…whatever.  I don’t hold grudges…much. 
 

The Fountainhead by Lana 

DH: What degree did you earn at Satan’s School for Girls?

LG: Well I didn’t earn anything really. It was all in jest. Since I already had a heavy fan base of Satanists who were completely convinced I was a witch, I just went along. They all tell me you can be practicing witchcraft without even knowing it. After being alerted to the fact that Anton LaVey, founder of the modern church of Satan, was deeply influenced by the writings of Ayn Rand, it all started to come together. LaVey had apparently paraphrased Ayn Rand’s writings and incorporated them into the foundation of the church. Once I understood this, it was clear why any philosophical words from me, which held in part an Objectivist viewpoint, might be seen as Satanic. I have learned a bit about the history of Satanism from artist Stephen Leyba, who was anointed years back as a Satanic minister (by LaVey). 

DH: Magritte said that worthy painters should specialize in images rather than ideas. Having a soft spot for art for art’s sake, I tend to yawn at political/moral works, especially preachy progressive or religious ones. However, when the frivolous reigns, I want manifestos. And I do reject art that only deconstructs or shatters ideas. 

What matters most to you in your own art – the image or the idea, or is the dichotomy unnecessary? What does art ultimately mean to you?

LG: Some artists think that art has to have a purpose beyond producing joy in the eye of the viewer. Others think that art has a primary obligation to produce joy in the eye of the viewer. There are other interpretations that address the meaning of art and there have been since the beginning of art. I am not a scholar, but an artist. For me personally, art or creative writing represents and releases my thoughts and feelings. That’s it. Everyone is different. Even in my portraits of others, it becomes a way of laying myself bare and throwing back the world as I see it…or feel it. 

Any benefits that may or may not come from it have little to do with what internally drives me to do it. I am just compelled to do it. That’s all I know. 

DH: How far should an artist’s biography color his or her artistic reception? Can one can be in extreme disagreement with aspects of the personal lives and world views of artists, including actors, but appreciate much – if not all – of their work? David Byrne put it perfectly in his Bicycle Diaries: “My definition of what is good art…isn’t determined by the biography of its creator…At what point does the extra-creative activity of the person begin to make a difference in how we perceive their work?”

George Orwell nailed it in his incensed criticism of the ultra-controversial Salvador Dali: “One ought to be able to hold in one’s head simultaneously to the two facts that Dali is a good draughtsman and a disgusting human being. The one does not invalidate or, in a sense, affect the other.” How do you approach artists and their art (or art and its artists)? How do you navigate the glory and garbage?

LG: Ah yes, this is a question I have incessantly grappled with within myself forever. It should not differ really from public boycotts of businesses who support views we do not hold, and yet, often, art does. People will forgive certain artists any sin regardless of the weight of its seriousness. The artist as opposed to the art are not always as closely related as people believe. Some are, sure. Many argue that an artist’s work reflects his deepest held convictions and values. However, when you have seen that serial-killer John Wayne Gacy has painted a field of flowers or what might have been an entertaining, benevolent clown had we not known his nature, it gets confusing doesn’t it? Then you have some humanitarians making some of the most disturbing art you ever laid your eyes on. Artists, for instance, may use a swastika or a cross in a work, and if you don’t know them personally you aren’t sure if they are opposing, demystifying or endorsing these symbols.

Thomas Kincade was a very dark person. The Carpenters were dark people. Who knew? We don’t always know people because we know their art. We have to find our own lines. I can admire a work while despising, questioning or misunderstanding the artist. I can separate them – sometimes. LOL. It has to do with degrees of what we will and will not accept.  

DH: Got pubic hair?* (Before you smack me and call me “masher,” that’s meant as a rhetorical question.) In my interview with the formidable painter Susannah Martin, I addressed the refreshing inclusion of female pubic hair on her nudes: “Despite my praise of artifice and mown flora, I applaud the tufts in Courbet’s Origin of the World, in any Delvaux or Magritte nude.” The persistent trend in the last 25 years or so seems to be the sunny patio rather than the shadowy thicket. What are your thoughts on bald versus hairy pudenda in art, fashion, even porn?

 *inspired by the famous “Got Milk?” ad campaign 

LG: Well I have to say that’s an odd question, but given how many vaginas I have included in my work, I’ll address it!  People are far too freaked about vaginas in general. Friend, model, and horror-movie actress Erin Russ once referred in conversation to the overgrown yoni as a 70s power muff. LOL!  She’s always had a brilliant turn of phrase and I found it rather hysterical.

Hair, no hair? I don’t care.  As far as my own, I’d rather not make it a subject of public consumption here. I’m sure the vagina will make an encore in my own work again, because it is relevant in my symbolism. I never add it for shock, it just seems to communicate certain things that wax and wane depending on context. Porn? I dunno. For whatever reason, you can post images of art where people are sliced to pieces and people will nod with approval, which is fine. Show them a pussy in your art, and there’s a better chance they will lose their minds. A vagina is not only a natural part of the body; it’s also a powerful visual symbol, which I did not completely understand until I publicly showed works that included them. I find it shocking that people find them so…shocking! I don’t know. I didn’t invent the fucking thing or how people prefer to view it.  
 

DH: William Blake saw women’s nakedness as God’s work. Artistic portrayal of the nude female began to surpass the Greeks’ Apollonian worship of the male form during the Renaissance (despite Michelangelo and Leonardo), gained gusto with Rubens and kicked into high gear in the 18th and 19th centuries. Since that grand aesthetic shift the female body, with or without clothes, has been the default locus of beauty.

Of course, “a woman is closest to being naked when she is well-dressed,” as Coco Chanel said. The fashion industry is dominated by female models, who are scarlet-lettered for feeding a traumatic “female body image” that prompts Anna Quindlen to call for the Barbie doll to be slain like a vampire (yo, Anna: Barbie’s about the clothes, stupid). Along with Camille Paglia, I think fashion is high art. How do you view the bodiness of females in art, the woman as the gaze’s target, so-called body image and Barbie? Is fashion art? 

LG: Well, I will start backwards. Yes, fashion is art. It can be bad, horrifying, good or great art of course. Fantastic fashion is an amazing thing. I love the work of Edith Head, Vivian Westwood, Coco Chanel, and the list goes on. As far as Barbie goes, I think that this rigid view is just one more manifestation of America’s ever creeping victim mentality. Barbie is a motherfucking doll. I had them, and they did not ruin my life or my self-image. Do I think it’s wonderful that we have a less narrow view of beauty in print and in toys now? Of course. It’s great. I just think all this shit about “If I played with a Barbie I always felt I had to look like Barbie” is fucking absurd. I don’t think people looked at stuffed Snoopy dolls and cried because they did not look like them, unless they were Furries (wink). I don’t think most little boys looked at Stretch Armstrong and cried and said, “I’ll never be like him!” I just fucking don’t. People say ‘But Barbie does not look real.’ Of course she doesn’t look real. She’s a goddamned doll for Christ’s sake. If you’re running around depressed because you never lived up to your childhood toys and icons like Wonder Woman, Superman, Spider-Man, or Barbie, you got some serious fucking issues, man. 

By the way, the idea that the female form is more entrancing or beautiful than the male form is not seen through my eyes. Both men and women can be visually intoxicating and beautiful. 

 Pin-up sketch by Lana

DH: What works of visual art (including films) rock your ass and roll your soul?

LG: Oh my God, too many to mention. I will only add a slice from arenas that are mostly familiar. I absolutely love the paintings of Dino Valls. I am a huge fan of Eric White’s paintings. I love [Frank] Frazetta’s paintings. Beksinski is incredible. I love the drawings of Paul Rumsey. I have an affinity for Maxfield Parrish and others from the Golden Age: Frida Kahlo, Yashifumi Hayashi, to name a few.

Films.  Well, I love Blue Velvet by David Lynch, Terry Zwiegoff’s Crumb, Wernor Herzog’s Grizzly Man, The Machinist directed by Brad Anderson, Heavenly Creatures by Peter Jackson, Murderous Maids by Jean-Pierre Denis (and its English remake, Sister My Sister), anything [by Alejandro] Jodorowsky, Brother’s Keeper by Joe Berlinger, Four little Girls by Spike Lee, as well as other stuff he’s done, anything by Alfred Hitchcock, anything by David Cronenberg, and on and on and on… I also am a gigantic fan of so many documentaries. The brilliant editorial process involved in presenting a particular view is such a fascinating art form. 

DH: You also write, mostly short stuff – including memoirs, embellished memoirs, dreams, brutally honest observations, and weird but insightful – even koan-like – vignettes. Some kickass lines from some of your stuff: “You can’t choose true suffering. It chooses you.” “No flesh falling from the bone could have ever made you one drop less beautiful to me.” “It’s time to wash all this deceptive sand and molasses from my motor and get the fuck on with it.” “Never was I more empathic than in that moment that I crawled onto and inside of her, to feel every vapor of what she was feeling.” “A man is such a fragile creature. The most fragile creature on the earth.”

LG: HEY! I resent the fuck out of that “embellished memoir” comment you tried to slide in on me!  Did I write all those?  Thanks for reading them back and thanks for your kind words, sir. I stand by them all.  

DH: You also jam poetry here and there, and I noticed that all of your poems rhyme. Is that a natural inclination, or is there a particular reason? Have you ever thought of compiling stuff for a book? Also, spiel about your favorite authors and their works.

LG: They don’t all rhyme but my mind has always easily pulled together rhymes. It’s a compulsion to quickly organize words in a certain manner – and a compulsion for my hands to dance quickly across the keys when I release them. Some people find poetic rhyming archaic, flowery, or childlike. I can only say I love to do it. I love the perfection and lost floral notes of Edgar Allan Poe. I love the metaphor and order of Emily Dickinson. 

Books are great. You already know I love The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. I love Presentations of Gender by M.D. Robert J. Stoller, Phantoms of the Brain by V.S. Ramachandron, My Dark Places by James Ellroy, Disco Blood Bath by James St. James, The Power of Positive Thinking by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie – so many. I guess it becomes obvious here that I am inclined to non-fiction and true crime, although I have enjoyed some great fiction too.

With regard to a book about me, I have been approached by an artist and keen thinker about doing a limited edition of books that reference me and my projects and life. We’ll see how it goes. 

DH: You’re affiliated with loBURN magazine, and your most recent contribution is an interview with the inimitable R. Crumb. Like bizarre greats such as Daniel Johnston and Tomi Ungerer, Crumb deserves his cult following and heavyweight title in underground-art history. What a fortunate opportunity. And, as I can testify, you didn’t waste it – the exchange was excellent. How did you convince such a private and discriminating artist to agree to the interview? And what was it like to conduct a dialogue with such a maestro? Tell us about how you became involved in loBURN and some of the other worthy artists you’ve met and/or interviewed.

LG: Yes loBURN is a quarterly, independent magazine where I can express myself with ease because there aren’t many hard fast rules. I am grateful to do some writing and editing there. Some of the notable artists I have interviewed in the course of my life are are Joe Coleman, Norbert Kox, Pamela Wilson, Chet Zar, Chris Mars, Paul Rumsey, Dave MacDowell, Paul Booth, Laurie Lipton and so many more. 

I write about things and people that interest me. Other creative people also contribute to loBURN: Tatomir Pitirui, Hope Bellgren, Abe Weinstein, and Allisun Talley as solid staff – and many other fluctuating, recurring contributors. It’s a labor of love. 

I’ll address Crumb here. He definitely deserves his place and then some. I did not get an immediate reply when I contacted [him]. He usually does only extremely visible and occasional interviews at this point in his life. He made me fight for the interview, which I appreciated. I was persistent, and he eventually asked me to pitch it while saying he would likely not do it.   I could only pitch it by telling him about my strange life and why his work had always been inspirational to me. 

There was a fascinating back-and-forth process that took place in my trying to get that interview. It was the one interview that I was steadfastly compelled to do. I’m a huge fan of the work. I am a huge fan of his courage, which is unconscious and immediate. I am a huge fan of the way he loves and worships his wife. There is a subtext there between the lines of his “deviant” (if you want to call them that) or natural thoughts and expressions about women, a subtext that contains his adoration of his wife. There is also an open expression from Crumb about the amazing attributes of Aline Crumb. She is also a wonderful artist, a brilliant thinker, and hysterically funny. She seems to completely accept him as he is no matter what he says, thinks or creates. His observations and fleeting thoughts about women or anything else don’t seem to incite any disdain in her. She is powerful. This is my view anyway. I think he is incredibly honest and she encourages him to be honest among other things. They have an impressive simpatico.

Robert Crumb is iconic, not just as a comic artist, but as a living monument to truth and fearlessness. Like so many before me, I just can’t even begin to express what an inspiration he is as an artist and thinker. I think every artist should see Terry Zweigoff’s and David Lynch’s documentary, Crumb, and, of course, they should explore his work in other ways.  

DH: Death is always on my mind. I don’t fear it as much as I resent it. The “death is part of life” platitude seems unacceptable, and I feel that mortality is something very wrong in existence. However, I often envy the majority’s daily suppression of this monumental anxiety. Is denial of death the nucleus of most human activity? Do you fear and/or resent death?

LG: I don’t know that it is really suppression, but maybe it is. To engage it too much while living can obviously be unhealthy. I had a tremendous fear of death in my youth perhaps because my mother died young. I am not without fear I suppose, if I obsessed on it.  I’ve been close to death, and that brought me closer to understanding how the mind can hand it over and be okay sometimes. Tremendous physical pain or mental pain can make a person beg for death. That’s a morose answer, but it’s true. For me, considering ever-lasting life in one present consciousness…is much more daunting than the fear of death. 

When I think of death, my greatest terror is leaving the world with too many unconsummated ideas trapped inside my head that will never come to fruition. This brings me to the resolution of willing my ideas to other artists as I am going (should I have that luxury, woe is me) and mandating that they gather to have a show of my visions as they see them after I’m gone.  How grandiose and neurotic is that? LOL! Still, some other artist will steal that. 

DH: Yet, there’s Joy, isn’t there? In one of my books I speak of an “Imperceptible Door,” a redeeming permeation of what appears to be a closed physical system of ultimate futility. Something you wrote reminded me of this imagery: “I’ve been knocking on a door, that’s not a door at all,/Knocking on a door that is a wall.” The great Chinese theologian and Christian martyr, Watchman Nee, claimed that we fight in vain to enter a room in which we already are in, that grace has already opened the door and let us in. “Think of the absurdity of asking to be put in!” Eldridge Cleaver spoke of an immortal, salvational spark inside all of us, “In the midst of the foulest decay and putrid savagery, this spark speaks to you of beauty, of human warmth and kindness, of goodness, of greatness, of heroism, of martyrdom, and it speaks to you of love.”

So, is there a door, Lana? Are we knocking needlessly instead of listening for a knock? Does a spark penetrate the Abyss? Please share your thoughts about Joy versus despair.

LG: Eldridge Cleaver had it right. Consider Anne Frank. I’m knocking on and listening to everything, whether it echoes or not. People tell me sometimes that I glorify darkness, when in fact I only acknowledge darkness. I don’t glorify it, nor do I ignore it. Life is comprised of joy and despair. Most people have that to reconcile, regardless of their situation. Funny that a life of mostly glory can sometimes create a vacuum of no appreciation. It can also make people ill-prepared for reality. When despair comes to knock, the one who has lived a life of mostly glory has no calluses, no preparation for despair. Each of these forces plays against the other in the course of our lives. I’ve had plenty of despair and tragedy. For me, it has made me a person who can be utterly enraptured by the scent of a rose or the brilliance of a dandelion. I’d like to also think that it gave me an infrastructure of reinforced steel.  Not all events in life allow for such philosophy but it’s the best I can say. Perspective is everything. Despair can make one so very appreciative of joy. It can also teach us that the most humble and simple things in life, can be joyful.

By the way, thanks for letting me bend your ear in an online interview. It gave me a chance to speak my mind in an unfettered manner.

See more of Lana’s art here.  Experience her via social media here.

Lana Gentry is a self-taught artist and writer who lives in Virginia. She specializes in graphite and colored-pencil drawings, and her work has been featured in many group exhibitions, including one in Shanghai, China along with art photographer Kristy Evans. to present a two-woman show in Shanghai, China.  Her numerous writing credits include articles, interviews (particularly in loBURN magazine) and fiction (in Dire McCaine’s and D.M. Mitchell’s horror-story collection, A Dream of Stone). Learn more about Lana and her art here.

published by Edgar & Lenore’s Publishing House
Los Angeles, 2014

order the book here or here

I can spiel about many subjects somewhat handily, but alchemy is one that ultimately escapes me, or, rather, that I haven’t chased very far.  The subject is never far away, however.  One can’t be a fan of William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, or dig anything by comics-writer Alan Moore, Jacob Boehme, Eckhart (not actor Aaron), H.P. Lovecraft, Friedrich Schiller and Hermetically-seasoned Swedenborg without encountering alchemy.  Also, lovers of Nietzsche can’t deny that his call for transfiguration, transvaluation and annihilation/re-creation of the Self involves the alchemical processes of solve and coagula: disintegration and reintegration, filling in the void of deconstruction with a better synthesis lest nihilism toss us into an existential trash heap.  As Schiller wrote in On the Aesthetic Education of Man: “Like the chemist, the philosopher finds combination only through dissolution, and the work of spontaneous Nature only through the torture of Art.”

OK, maybe I can spiel on the subject with some vim, but I defer to author Marie Lecrivain as an abler enthusiast – or, rather, an in-the-know practitioner.  I, frankly, haven’t the patience nor finesse to attempt a coherent book involving alchemy and such.  (I’m much more apt to say “The philosopher’s stoned” than seek the Philosopher’s Stone.)  However, my shortcomings on the matter aren’t what make me respect The Virtual Tablet of Irma Tre.  It’s the fact that the book is smart and insightful, and it’s as simultaneously simple and deep as ABC – literally: the poem titles are in alphabetical order (which must’ve been a feat in itself).  I like when an author’s particular style is applied to abstract ideas and grand universals, so I’m pleased that the book imparts Lecrivain’s own brand of the esoteric.

As I understand it, alchemy is essentially about finding and enhancing the Self, which is truly the final frontier, a dwarfer of oceans.  The Self business requires one to go beyond where science can go.  It’s about progress – and art.  “Alchemy is evolution,” Lecrivain writes in a brief preface.  For her “[t]he Universe is an ongoing experiment in alchemy,” and “everything [she does] is alchemy, including writing poetry.”  This is benign poison against nihilism.  There is a goal, a dialectical flow, a bright future, though all is cyclical and repetitive, as symbolized by the Ouroboros, the dragon/snake swallowing its own tail.  (In typical thoroughness Lecrivain covers the letters O and U with poems entitled “Oroboros” and “Uroboros.”)  A clip from “Trituration”:

Remember: All of this has happened before,
and will again.  It won’t lessen the pain,
but it will put a smile on your face.

And in “Distillation”:

…This is the time to
focus on what, where, and who you become on
your next turn of the wheel, the centrifuge of
incarnation that separates the karmic detritus of
your past and future selves. 

This reminds me of Nietzsche’s endorsement of (probably not belief in) “eternal recurrence of the same” and finding joy in everything that happens in a lifetime as if there are endless exact reiterations of it.  However, that notion doesn’t allow for karma’s variability, prioritizes necessity over what he sometimes called mendacious idealism and rejects the possibility of a world-beyond (Hinterwelten).  Lecrivain seems to appreciate both the given and the transcendent, and she celebrates the orchestration of existents, without the Nietzschean hierarchy of rule of the best.  “We’re all grapes on the cosmic vine” goes a line in a poem called “Wine.” Just as unlikely, diminutive Hobbits determined the fate of Tolkein’s Middle-earth, even the smallest of earthly things is worthy and can enhance the universe, as shown in “Stone”:

Whether it be a boulder
on which to build our kingdom
or a pebble skipped across
the streams of time…
Even the cobblestones
have a great destiny.

Great destiny isn’t easy to accept, however.  The Self is hard-won.  As the closing caption in Marvel’s Amazing Fantasy #15 (featuring the origin of Spider-Man) says, “[w]ith great power there must also come – great responsibility.”  Speaking of comics, I’m reminded of something Alan Moore said:

[Y]ou can almost understand the desire to simply wipe out that awareness [of being a Self], because it’s too much of a responsibility to actually possess such a thing as a soul, such a precious thing. What if you break it? What if you lose it? Mightn’t it be best to anesthetize it, to deaden it, to destroy it, to not have to live with the pain of struggling towards it and trying to keep it pure?

Moore’s words, in turn, remind me of “Iron,” one of my favorite pieces in The Virtual Tablet of Irma Tre:

In the blood of the spine, there’s a soul that
never breaks, whose blade never

rusts. Fortified with intent, it’s the weapon of your
soul.  Use it carefully, with no

objections and never in anger.  If you follow these
instructions to the letter, then

no one dares cross you in times of war or peace –
unless you’re a fool.

This unbreakable soul, this rust-proof sword seems to be what Lecrivain refers to in “Liquor Hepatis”: a wound-healing “unblemished fire of truth.”  More from the poem:

You begin to see
at the soul’s atomic level,
the small and vast miracle of change
that happens without and within.

Transformation is sometimes traumatic, making the resulting pleasure that much better, the horizons that much wider, as expressed in “Cinnabar”:

You and I smash
Against the walls of our souls…

Exhausted and empty,
we carefully place
curious fingers into the cracks
of our fissured selves,
with tender appreciation
for new dimensions.

And in “Vitriol” (another of my favorites):

We never thank the ones who murder us…
We never appreciate the death of love…
until one day
we awaken, tearless
and excited, for the first time
in years.  We rush to the mirror
and find a new face there to greet us…

The quest for the Philosopher’s Stone, the Ultimate Substance or the Self (the Great Work), what Alan Watts might call It, tends to be a trial-by-crucible that reaches denouement only after an Ingmar-Bergman-caliber spiritual mangling or even a “Hulking out,” as many fellow comic-book dorks might put it.  (The cathartic, enlightened Self is likened to an erupting and annihilating Vesuvius in an Irma Tre piece called “Retort.”)  However, though we may have to endure destruction and heartbreak in order to awaken to understanding and a renewed self, sometimes re-creation requires simply reaching out and bringing the poles of the spectrum together, tapping in to the moment’s music.  In “Quintessence”:

…The connection
established, your voices ascend in song,
a sweet trio attuned to the vibration
of the Cosmos.  There’s no need to prolong
the ecstasy from above or below;
from this perfect union will new life flow.

“Xanthosis/Yellow Phase” (the title cleverly covering the letters X and Y) continues the theme of reconciled polarities:

Intellectual/Intuitive
Rational/Mutable
Fearful/Courageous
Stubborn/Acquiescent
Logic/Passion
Peace/War
Word/Will
Compromise
Conjunction
Inspiration
Poet –

With that closing word we come back to Lecrivain’s claim about the alchemical nature of writing poetry, and, while I’m typing this, I realize that “compromise” and “conjunction” render “reconciled polarities” inaccurate.  Perhaps, as Schiller would have it, polarities can never not be polarities.  They can be made to hold hands but only stand politely side by side.  In other words, to borrow from Schiller again, and to riff off of what Lecrivain seems to be saying, it’s not a matter of blurring opposites but one of harmonizing them – or, better yet, to quote Schiller directly this time, “the absolute including of all.”  He saw one’s blindness to human dignity as the reason one is antagonistic to others, since she/he sees her/his own lowly self in others rather than seeing others, who should be treated with dignity, in himself.

If a soul takes so much to be realized, how priceless it must be.  If Lecrivain is correct in saying the alchemical process is evolutionary, then it’s not an automatic, consciousness-from-accident, impersonal evolution.  Anyone who really considers prehistoric cave paintings can see that the keenness of those early humans has been quite underestimated.  How complex and persistent are human minds!  Every individual (whether a boulder-person or pebble-person) has a chance to effect major changes in her- or himself and the world – and beyond.  As an outspoken anti-utopian I usually wince at most reformative/progressive spiels, but I dig the idea of tending our own gardens: refining ourselves and promoting healthy metaphysical harvests so that positive things can happen on at least a local scale, perhaps creating an aggregate “awakening” to cosmic glory.  The Virtual Tablet of Irma Tre has stirred and reinvigorated my thoughts on this stuff.  For that I’m grateful.

I’ve addressed some of my favorite parts, but honorable mentions are due to “Egg,” “Hermaphrodite,” and “Fixation,” which contains this brilliant, enviable line: “Soon,/you’ll be asleep,/and when you awake,/you’ll always be a sleep.”  A poem called “Geber” also caught my eye since I’m familiar some Geber and False-Geber.  The best line in the poem: “He’s the pharmacist/who regales you/with tales of what happens/to the unwary who mix/SSRIs with chardonnay.”  And “King” features an arousing pre-coupling of the King, “a man among men” with a crowned “rooster-shaped pompadour,” and an expectant Pre-Raphaelite-wet-dream Queen.  She “manifests beyond the pale:/a vision in virginal blue negligee,” and “[h]is staff is at the ready.”  (Is it getting hot in this review, or is it just me?)

The Virtual Tablet of Irma Tre may be the best of what I’ve read of Lecrivain’s work.  She has an enviable knack for being able to produce quality books in a wide subject range pretty regularly.  This latest work inspired me to take a fresh look at magic, alchemy, shamanism and other rich but very misunderstood – even maligned – stuff.  Lecrivain celebrates it all via transformative poetry, a craft she loves, a craft of love, a (forgive me)…lovecraft?


P.S.: The book’s title, The Virtual Tablet of Irma Tre, nods to The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegisatus (the Thrice Great).

Invite children to visit Arizona’s lovely Madera Canyon without leaving home.  In the tradition of Bringing Rain To Kapiti Plain and “The House That Jack Built,” In Madera Canyon unfolds with progressive verse in which birds, flowers and animals are revealed one by one.  Both parents and teachers are encouraged to purchase this entertaining and educational book.

published by Wheatmark
author’s site
artist’s site

BUY THE BOOK at Amazon or Wheatmark

Jane Freese, a former journalist, photographer, librarian and award-winning writer, shares the wonders of the hummingbird, the trumpet plant, Madera Canyon Creek, the side-blotched lizard, the Arizona gray squirrel, the mountain lion, the white-tailed deer, the white-nosed coati, the elegant trogon, the western tanager, the black bear, the American kestrel and the Harris hawk.


Rick Wheeler, award-winning painter, illustrator, college mentor, art instructor and graphic artist, produced the book’s wonderful scratchboard paintings.
____________

Coati

Tanager

BUY THE BOOK at Amazon or Wheatmark

“Oblivion comes first with fruit and bread…”

published by Flutter Press
learn more and order the book here

“The Loss followed by GMO (Great Moments of Oblivion) was written during a period of doubts and uncertainties. Life’s events always inspire me. They are my fuel, my muses, my most terrible companions when I sit in front of the digital page to write…One year after two of my previous collections were published Maore (Lapwing Publishing) and Carmine Carnival (Lazarus Media), to have this chapbook published fills me with pride and joy. I know this is the best homage I could give to my father. Not only because most of the poems in this collection are about him, our relationship and the frightening gap his death has brought, but because Great Moments of Oblivion is about food, and that he was a chef and taught me how to enjoy food. ” – Walter Ruhlmann

______________

Walter Ruhlmann works as an English teacher, edits mgversion2>datura and runs mgv2>publishing. His latest collections are Maore published by Lapwing Publications, UK, 2013 and Carmine Carnival published by Lazarus Media, USA, 2013. Coming up in 2014 The Loss through Flutter Press, Crossing Puddles through Robocup Press, and Twelve Times Thirteen through Kind of a Hurricane Press.




Visit Ruhlmann’s blog.

“Quick reviews for those of us who love movies and hate the pompous punks who tell us what is good and what is bad. All done by yours truly, someone who watches waaaay too many movies.” – Tom


Like the official Facebook page

Selected categories at the Facebook page
(Click on the photos to read the reviews.)

GOOD FLICKS (rentals, Netflix, HBO, etc.)
BAD MOVIES – (rentals, Netflix, HBO, etc.)
NETFLIX – Creature features
NETFLIX – Action/Thriller
NETFLIX – Horror Recommendations
Great Military Movies
NEW RENTALS – GOOD STUFF
NEW RENTALS – NOT SO GOOD
Bad Movies I Freakin’ Love
NOW PLAYING
NEED TO WATCH AGAIN
IN THEATERS
(and many more!)

From Aleister Crowley to Charles Manson, Liverpool to L.A., MAN/SON explores an artistic evocation of America’s occult underbelly. 

published by Darq Matter Publishing, 2013

Order now!
Learn more here.

“Van Gough takes a deep, painterly approach to the Manson saga as he explores the occult undercurrents,both historical and speculative.” – Lisa Derrick, Cartwheel

From Van Gough’s Artist’s Statement:

“In my journey, there have been threads that go beyond mere happenstance, symbols and ciphers that are window dressing for something profound and dark beneath.  In commencing then with the new series, utilizing the tragic muse and slain Madonna figure of Sharon Tate as a symbol for an endpoint, there was a need to relate and process that which is beyond understanding. Peter Levenda’s words in Sinister Forces Book III sum it up for me, ‘[F]or the occultist-there is truly “no such thing as coincidence,” or more accurately, that coincidence is a clue that deeper connections exist between observable phenomena, that another force of nature is at work that we don’t understand.’  The MAN/SON series seeks to make sense of those fatal events of 1969, and what I have come to term as sinister architecture.”

War




Order now!
Learn more here.

David is an artist who lives in Switzerland.  See more of his work here.


Supporting the Truth Lest We Fall

Night Table

Edge of the Known World Looking Back

Escape of the Truth Into the World

Trawling the Shores of REM

BAD FRUIT*
for Denise

You’re a bad apple, says my aunt.
She’s thankful I fell from a different tree.
I won’t disagree. Three of her four never
graduated high school. All had shotgun weddings,
and I write letters to one in a Florida prison.
He was on the news—seems like every channel.
I admit: I’m glad we have different last names.
But I’m the apple whose seeds won’t bear fruit,
which makes me bad as gay can be.
How does she speak of her son? The hold up.
His pulling the trigger. A bullet to the back of the head.
How does she explain the fruit she bore?
I say it is rotten to the core.

*This piece was originally published in the sixth issue of Assaracus.

SIGNS*

My mother dreams of dark running water.
She calls. It was the death dream.
I follow the speed limit.
I walk faster than normal through crosswalks.
I am even more careful when showering,
a fall now seems more probable.
When I was a child she told me
the secret of this dream—
someone would die
but she didn’t know who.
The dream came when my grandmother
was admitted to the hospital,
when a family friend
was supposed to be winning
her battle with cancer.
And, the time it came
when she couldn’t think
of anyone sick, my father’s favorite
employee was hit by a car.
I told you, she whispered.
I prayed to God—begged Him
not to pass this curse to me.
I had no desire to ache in my soul
with limited knowledge.
As a teenager I thought it all
a world of coincidence—
that there aren’t signs placed
to tell us what will come.
But, yesterday, I was in a bar
with Julie, trying to let go
and when I looked up
I saw we were sitting under
a poster of Dolly Parton.
I knew this was a sign.
The night was going to be good.
Everything on our trip would be okay.
This sign was meant just for me.
Honestly. How much different am I from my mother?


*This piece is forthcoming in the Queer South anthology (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2014).

AFTER THE INTERVIEW
for Dr. G

I’m fascinated with the way
we can purposely betray someone,
how we know we’re doing wrong
then feel guilty with a chance
of it repeating. We can take
someone’s heart and destroy it—
a piece of ice placed
in the sun’s light.
We can hold someone’s hand
so softly, yet twist it suddenly.
I’m fascinated with the way
we can become the betrayed
when once we were the betrayers.
It’s like we’re given medicine
for an illness we once transmitted.
How we miss the warning signs
even though we once created them
and held them high in the air.
I’m fascinated with betrayal.
I’m fascinated with sin itself—
the way it captures us
like a fish on a hook.

© Dustin Brookshire

Read the SubtleTea interview with Dustin here.
Get information about his chapbook, To the One Who Raped Me, here.

published by Shelfstealers, Inc.
more info here

I read contemporary fiction very rarely these days, so I’d better be damned impressed when I do.  As a sucker for titles, I was curious about Kerry Dunn’s Joe Peace right off the bat.  Wary after seeing that the book was a crime story told in first-person narrative, I started reading, hoping not to have to endure half-baked (half-boiled?) Nicholas Pileggi or Chandler/Hammett fare.  My fears faded after only the first couple pages.  First of all, I’m much more partial to Mickey Spillane than Raymond and Dashiell, so Dunn’s quick-witted but rough-edged style for the narrating protagonist felt like home – without being annoyingly derivative.  Instead, the lingo (clever similes and street-/pop-culture-wise metaphorizing) is respectfully emulous of the hardboiled tradition, showing off Dunn’s good ear for inner and outer speech.

The author also has balls, because Kingpin in Decline is about as threadbare as Cop Gets Into Deep Investigation or A Deadly Mess Right Before Retirement.  The cloth holds together, however.  Plots are secondary to me.  It’s the presentation that impresses, and Dunn does that with skill. But don’t fret, plot people.  You’ll enjoy a tragic love story that’s revealed gradually in tastefully paced flashbacks and made relevant by a certain special someone who shows up in the first third of the novel.  (Attention: no spoilers!)  How Peace and this certain special someone interact, and who she is, rocks his already well-rocked world, reminding me of vintage Spillane: “This girl was twenty and threw daggers.  I felt sorry for the poor bastard, somewhere down the road, who fell in love with her.  He’d have to learn to love the cuts, along with the woman who provided them.”  Also, just the right helping of sentimentalism satisfied this old softie’s heartstring-pulling quota.  Publishers Weekly is right on by describing the book as “an exciting gang story and heartbreaking tale of relationships.”

Joe Peace used to be a cop.  A lousy cop.  A drug-addicted cop trying to maintain a relationship with an upstanding woman who sometimes worked Narcotics Division.  Who makes a better criminal than a former man of the law?  Whether one is a police officer or an attorney, the fall from grace can be that much more intense and deep, thanks to close proximity to the dark side.  Isn’t it obvious that lawmakers are a hair’s breadth away from being lawbreakers – and more primed than laymen to make the easy but drastic transition?  When do-gooders realize that reward comes more quickly and abundantly to do-badders (at least at first), temptation pulls ferociously.  As the narration goes in Joe Peace: “It’s easy to turn to a life of crime.  You just roll over.”

I can’t help but think of the Kleinfeld character in Brian de Palma’s underrated film, Carlito’s Way: a lawyer who has defended and cavorted with high-level criminals so much that he becomes like them.  The film is De Palma’s “answer” to his earlier Scarface, whose lead character, Tony Montana, is a brazen, hasty, vain, coked-out creep.  Carlito is the older, wiser, penitent possible future of the roughshod Montana.  I mention these films because Dunn’s protagonist seems to be on the same trajectory (from Montana’s recklessness to Carlito’s remorse): doing his desperate best to atone for and clear the future path of his degradation, drug abuse and brutal sins – the greatest of which was sacrificing the love of his life to a lucrative and debauched death-culture: “To get what I wanted, I had to give up what I loved.”

Though Peace can be a real scumbag, and not every aspect of the character impresses me, there’s enough introspection, eclectic knowledge, sense of humor and irony to make him charming without risking incredulity (though his mindrobatics could be considered too slick by some readers).  His desire to balance out the stupid and ruthless decisions he’s made in his hollow life, his intense reverence for his lost love, and his pursuit of atonement and redemption are the stuff of heroes.

Not that his redemptive methods are those of a Joe Friday or a white-hatted Ranger.  “To get away clean, you have to play dirty” goes the cheesy-but-true tagline for the action flick Parker (yet another movie in which Jason Statham plays Jason Statham).  Sometimes rules need to be bent to get things straight.  For you sticklers of just deserts, Dunn provides his conflicted character with an indirect, rather banal comeuppance (which underscores Peace’s progressive shedding of blinding, selfish pride), but I won’t reveal what that is.

I think Dunn’s novel essentially illustrates the doom referred to in the New Testament spiel about gaining the whole world at the expense of one’s soul.  After one of the flashbacks about the love of his life, Peace admits: “I’d give everything up, my house, my cars, my money, if I could rewrite history.  But I guess the only reason people want things to be different is because they aren’t.”  The truth is that he never really bought his kingpin role:

I was always aware of the tectonic plates in my head, shifting around…[S]ometimes huge fissures would erupt, and echoes like buildings collapsing to rubble shook my foundation.

Every good rags-to-riches-to-roaches story illustrates the futility of grasping the Real object of Joy and the inevitable failure to obtain utopia, even a criminal one.  Not so deep down we know that we’re on a dead-end road when all we desire is desire itself.  There’s always a sense of loss and unrest.  Even Joe Peace’s surname hints at this (with all the subtlety of a grand piano), evoking the Jewish-bible line about saying “Peace, peace” when there is no peace.

The ultimate lesson after a life of crime and self-destructiveness?  Hell is not necessarily other people.  It’s often yourself. And home may be where the hurt is, but it’s also where the heart is.  As the final line in the book goes: “It’s where the people you love reside.”  To continue my lousy punning, I say give Joe Peace a chance.

review by David Herrle, December 2013

Some of my favorite lines in the book follow.

“We were dining at Mogini’s, an Italian place known for its veal and six-month waiting list, even though the place has been only been open two months.”

“And if motherhood is a fact, fatherhood, when you get right down to it, is a hypothesis.  Now, I ask you, who the fuck wants to be a fucking hypothesis?”

“His dark coat…swallowed him like a great sin.”

“He was one of those dudes who, if you were in a good mood, brought out compassion.  In a bad mood, you could kill the bastard.”

“Nothing put me in a dim frame of mind faster than effluvia all over me.”

On the band R.E.M.: “I liked those guys better when I couldn’t understand a goddamn word they said.”

“Her strawberry-blond hair framed a serene face in a way that suggested she worked on it…But nothing about her was soft.”

“I glanced at my watch, thinking, I just had sex with my watch on.”

“He patted my knee like a psychotic grandmother.”

Other Nick reviews: here and here

Sam Peckinpah’s Major Dundee and Juan Antonio Bayona’s The Impossible

I recall so well the braggadocious accolades that accompanied the 2005 “restoration” of Sam Peckinpah’s Major Dundee (1965), the much-maligned Western drama unceremoniously dumped on the market where it instantly became something of a colossal flop. Peckinpah had run into opposition from Columbia (the studio footing the bills) and non-compliance from his producer Jerry Bresler (a yes man for the front office). But in 2005, some seventeen years after Peckingpah’s death, critics like Boston’s Chris Fujwara and The Washington Post’s Steven Hunter were falling all over themselves with superlatives extolling the restored version as “magnificent…a unique piece of threatening…alcoholic cinema” with “high-end adult” themes and “a better grade of savagery,” carrying with it the ballast of “actual ideas…back in all the fractured glory and confidence.”

I would just like to go on record as saying that the only thing “fractured” herein is the movie, either in its theatrical or restored cut, the latter an approximation of what Peckinpah might have hoped for had his own steady hand been on the Moviola.  Yet I cannot even lay as much claim or faith in Peckinpah’s personal aspirations for Major Dundee, having begun it, as he did, without a finished script and basically shooting with only a very fragmented vision of the end result bouncing around in his head.  In hindsight, Peckinpah’s  unwillingness to revisit the film years later seems to attest to his own painful divorce from this artistic implosion of ‘high-end savagery’: a film that, doubtless, Peckinpah found nearly impossible to reappraise honestly without nursing a very large bottle of scotch.

Peckinpah had initially assigned the script writing duties to Harry Julian Fink, a middling writer (at best) who had been more prolific in television than movies. Dissatisfied with Fink’s prose (at 163 pages, it tended to ramble on – and on), Peckinpah undertook to edit down the material himself with assistance from Oscar Saul, who was by no means a heavy hitter but had more movie credits to his name. Yet, the results of all this perpetual tinkering seem to have given way to the old adage about “too many cooks spoiling the broth.” While Peckinpah had ambitions to create a sweeping epic masterpiece in the Western genre, comparable to David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia (Peckinpah’s favorite movie) from 1962, what he ultimately succeeded in resurrecting was the modest Monogram B-programmer with an A-list roster and production values that nearly sank the studio. 

Major Dundee is an intimate Western drama. Yet, in casting Charlton Heston as his title character, Peckinpah all but diffuses the ill-fated chimerical saga into one where its larger-than-life protagonist is unable to part the wilderness and lead his people onward without sacrificing his own powers as a major star. Heston championed Peckinpah’s vision for the movie when no one else seemed even mildly interested in making it. But he was to regret this decision when the director embarked upon his own irascible odyssey for perfection. Heston’s towering performance – however subtly nuanced – is nevertheless working against type. Not that Heston ever played a steely-eyed bastard before. In fact, he’d convincingly done so for William Wyler in another Western, The Big Country (1958).

But Charlton Heston and Major Amos Charles Dundee just don’t seem to go together. Heston gives a very credible performance, only the starch in those army britches is just too stiff, and the character never evolves beyond a very cold-hearted martinet who briefly loses himself in the arms of a Hispanic prostitute (Aurora Clavell).  This after having already seduced the top-heavy Teresa Santiago (Senta Berger) during an afternoon swim. The inability of the screenplay to give us even an ounce of sympathy for this cruel taskmaster, and Heston’s unapologetic adherence to the character as written, yields a characterization dangerously close to becoming the villain of the piece. Indeed, by the last act the audience is more apt to root for the doomed southern Captain Benjamin Tyreen (Richard Harris), who meets with a vicious if heroic fate, than the unrepentant Dundee, who is still willing to sacrifice every last man in his detail to save his own face by apprehending the blood-thirsty Apache marauder, Sierra Charriba (Michael Pate).

Harris’ performance is the standout in the film, full of contempt for Dundee’s methods but not without more than a modicum of self-loathing that challenges the audience to dig a bit deeper into his motivations and ultimately come to respect Tyreen’s sacrifice. The others in the cast, Jim Hutton as the regimented Lieutenant Graham, Michael Anderson Jr. as bugler Tim Ryan (on whose surviving diaries the film’s narrative is supposedly based), and particularly James Coburn’s masterful rendering of the one-armed native guide, Samuel Potts, offer the briefest of reprieves and escape from Dundee’s oppressions. But in the end they’re not enough to make us forget what a terrific monument to the damned Dundee is: a polarizing force who maintains the flimsiest tyrannical control over his men using nothing greater than the art of intimidation to keep them resentful, but also, regrettably, in line.

Adding to Peckinpah’s woes, Columbia chose to slash the film’s budget by a million and cut his shooting schedule down by fifteen days, just two days before principal photography was about to begin.  Peckinpah’s ability to work under such conditions bears out his commitment not simply to the actors or the film, but to will a finished product more finely wrought than the average fair of its day, yet painfully out of step with what the paying public wanted to see. The other great sin foisted upon the production, after Columbia executives decided to oust Peckinpah from the director’s chair and recut the movie themselves, is its jaunty Daniele Amfiteatrof score, full of rousing marches and other rambunctious orchestrations better suited for a Mexican fiesta on Olivera Street than the somber depiction of one man’s spiral into a kind of self-imposed purgatory.  For the 2005 “restoration” a new score was commissioned from Christopher Caliendo, more in keeping with Peckinpah’s vision for the film.

Yet that vision remains myopic at best. The story hardly improved by the added 14 minutes of “lost” footage placed into the film. There’s simply more to consider and – unfortunately – less to admire.  Howard Kunin, William A. Lyon and Donald W. Starling’s editing retreats into a series of visually overlapping montages. We are exposed to Sam Leavitt’s breathtaking cinematography: the sprawling Mexican landscapes imperfectly cut down into snippets awkwardly running into each other like jigsaw puzzle pieces that don’t fit but are being forcibly made to give the appearance of a perfect interlock.    

The story, such as it is, involves Union cavalry officer Major Amos Charles Dundee, mildly disgraced at the Battle of Gettysburg and relegated to the wilds of New Mexico where he micro-manages a prisoner of war camp. Prior to the main title sequence we witness the blood-thirsty Apache leader, Sierra Charriba, and his men massacre a small village of ranchers (men, women and female children, as well as Union cavalry sent there to protect them). Hence, when Dundee arrives with guide Samuel Potts he is committed to digging a mass grave. Upon returning to the camp Dundee decides to enlist as many of his prisoners for a special detail to hunt down Charriba. But Dundee’s motives are hardly altruistic or even in service of achieving justice for the fallen. Instead, his is an enterprising plan to rebuild his own tarnished reputation as a great military man and hopefully to elevate the army’s opinion of him from these currently abysmal circumstances.

Captain Benjamin Tyreen is hardly fooled by Dundee. Yet he remains chivalrous to a fault. Tyreen’s innate hatred of Dundee stems from an incident before the war when the Major cast his deciding vote in Tyreen’s court-martial from the U.S. Army for participating in a duel. In the theatrical cut our first encounter with Tyreen occurs after Dundee has already returned to base camp. He admonishes Tyreen’s refusal, and that of his fellow Confederates, to enlist in the cause of murdering Charriba. In the extended cut we meet Tyreen and these men as they strike a guard in their feeble escape attempt. Apprehended by Dundee and brought back in chains Tyreen and his men are informed that the guard they meant to merely wound has died of his injuries. Having been told by Tyreen that he would rather hang than serve, Dundee accepts Tyreen’s terms and begins to build his gallows. This stalemate is eventually broken by Tyreen, who physically assaults Dundee while still in chains and confers on him the terms for his complicity in the plot. Tyreen and his men will hunt until the last Apache is dead, but with the understanding of a full pardon awaiting them at the other end.

Although Dundee never actually agrees to these conditions he does not outwardly reject them either. Tyreen also promises that when the war against the Apache has ended his own private war against Dundee will result in the Major’s execution. Begrudgingly valued for his soldiering, as well as his gumption, a weird détente occurs between Dundee and Tyreen – tenuous at best, and infrequently threatening to break under pressure. Still, when push comes to shove, both men represent a united front that adheres to the mark of valor ascribed true military men. This is one of the oddities of the screenplay, for Tyreen repeatedly tells Dundee that he has no country after the civil war and seemingly zero loyalties to the newly formed United States of America.   

The strained alliance between the men is divided along lines of class (cavalry vs. prisoners), further splintered by North vs. South and colored vs. white. When these factions are not busy warring with each other they infrequently engage the Apache in several disastrous battles that brutalize the men and inflict many casualties. Charriba and his posse retreat to Mexico, garrisoned by French troops loyal to Emperor Maximilian. Knowing that to cross the border means a direct confrontation, Dundee nevertheless orders his men across the Rio Grande, into a small impoverished town overseen by Teresa Santiago, whose husband was executed for supporting Benito Juárez’s rebels.  

In a previous altercation with Charriba, Dundee lost most of his garrisons’ supplies, badly needed foodstuffs he was hoping to recoup in the village. Instead, Dundee shares what little remains with the impoverished villagers, allowing French forces to escape for backup. When these do indeed return to the village Dundee ambushes them by night, taking his lion’s share of badly needed supplies. Although Tyreen is cordial to Teresa, it is Dundee who conquers her heart – albeit very briefly. In an unguarded moment Dundee is wounded in the leg by Charriba’s arrow and forced to hold up in the French-occupied village of Durango – presumably for weeks – while Tyreen moves the men onward in search of this Apache viper. Losing himself in drink and self-pity, Dundee is discovered in the arms of a Spanish prostitute Melinche by Teresa who abruptly ends their vacuous affair, telling Dundee that for some men “the war will never be over.”

Tyreen returns with boastful swagger, challenging and humiliating Dundee in order to shake him loose of his inner regrets. A reformed Dundee returns to his men, feigning a sudden loss of desire to apprehend Charriba. The Apache leader falls for the rouse and plans his final attack, determined to murder Dundee and his men. Affectingly, Charriba’s arrival is met with a clever ambush instead. Bugler Tim Ryan, who has “become a man”  by losing his virginity to a Spanish girl, fires the fatal shot that puts a period to Charriba’s reign of terror. Their mission completed, Dundee and his men are outflanked by the French at the Rio Grande, making repeated valiant charges to cross it but incurring massive casualties, including Tyreen, who, wounded but still bitter, defies death to delay a second detachment of French cavalry singlehandedly. Dundee and his fragmented forces cross the river and head for home.

In either its extended or truncated form, Major Dundee remains a curious flop. Its ascribed epic quality useful perhaps only to describe the way the film persistently misfires at every conceivable turn and on practically every artistic level – and this, despite Peckinpah’s rather obvious attempts to will a silk purse from its sow’s ear. The strangeness of this artistic implosion is that Major Dundee never catches even the tail fire from some weighty performers giving it their all, coupled with its vistas and straggly landscapes meticulously lensed by Sam Leavitt but rendered muddy and dull in Pathe’s flawed Eastman color process. These invoke world-weariness all too readily apparent in Heston’s mellifluous performance as the dower Dundee, but regrettably do not equate to, foreshadow or even infer a looming sense of foreboding and grand tragedy that Peckinpah hoped for.  The…uh…romance between Teresa and Dundee is more dulcet than juicy and all but eclipsed by another: the fiery “bromance” between Tyreen and Dundee, two men who clearly share more than a mutual admiration beneath their outward derision of one another. 

I’ve set aside my own admiration for Peckinpah herein; a film maker elsewhere revered. But in all honesty, Peckinpah has made it all too easy for me to disregard and dislike Major Dundee. The flaw is not entirely his to bear. But in the final analysis, the film is little more than a major blunder, resurrected to prominence by its renewed resurgence on home video, though not to any greater level of artistic poignancy that one would have anticipated. I dislike being overly critical of movies in general. Even the bad one’s take time and ingenuity to make. But Major Dundee is a film that had a lot going for it at the start. That all its attributes combined come to more gumbo than glory left me feeling cheated from my viewing experience. 

And I watched it twice, first in its newly restored director’s cut, then again in its original theatrical cut. I will say this: for me, at least, the extended version just seemed like too much of a bad thing, the prolonged scenes never enhancing my understanding of the story. The pacing of the theatrical cut played much more “clean” in its narrative approach and to the point, at least, in my opinion. Regrettably, the essential tension is all but ruined in the theatrical cut by Daniele Amfitheatrof’s brutally buoyant underscore, laughingly making some of the visuals play like a badly blunted operetta rather than a Western epic. Christopher Caliendo’s 2005 score parallels and punctuates the action far more astutely.

Major Dundee has been released by Sony exclusively through Twilight Time/Screen Archives. We’ve been given the rare opportunity to watch both cuts, each on a separate disc with varying extra features. The 1080p image has been consistently rendered, illustrating the shortcomings of Pathe Eastman color film stocks. The image is very thick. Blue skies flicker purplish brown. I also have to say that the sequences shot at night are much too dark, particularly in the extended cut. Our introduction to Tyreen, being captured in his attempted escape from the camp, is a sea of blackness from which only Richard Harris’ wan face occasionally emerges from the murkiness as a disembodied head.

Flesh tones are more ruddy orange, though infrequently they look fairly accurate. Grain has been accurately reproduced. Again, the Eastman stock translates most of the outdoor landscapes into an indistinguishable brownish earthy tone. Trees are muddy grayish green rather than vibrant. Blue skies tend to appear washed out. These are not – I repeat – areb not a flaw in the mastering process. Sony has done their utmost to preserve the original look of the film. The audio on both cuts is 5.1 DTS but sounds infinitely more refined on the 2005 extended cut, perhaps because effects and dialogue had to be remixed with the newly recorded Caliendo underscore.  Extras are somewhat satisfying. We get both scores on an isolated track. On the extended cut we also get an audio commentary by Nick Redman, Paul Seydor, Garner Simmons and David Weddle. There’s also a litany of extended outtakes and deleted scenes, the original trailer and its 2005 reissue, plus an exhibitor’s reel.  Overall, I like what Sony and Twilight Time have done on this title. I just wish the material they had to work with – namely, the film – was more deserving of their hard efforts. Bottom line: not recommended.

Few natural disasters are as ingrained in my mind as the 2004 tsunami that decimated the coastal retreat of Khao Lak, Thailand, an event of such mind-boggling devastation its total comprehension is virtually impossible to fathom for those of us who were not there. The shaky images captured by terrified tourists on their iPhones and other home video recording devices flashing across our television screens were significant only in presenting the paralytic moment of impact and its immediate aftermath. But the overhead shots of earthy-colored rising tides consuming the coastline were strangely surreal, or perhaps even artificial, like a spectacular CGI effect created by Hollywood artisans instead of a raw and eviscerating act of Mother Nature.

I must confess to a naiveté. Until 2004 I don’t think I ever even heard the word “tsunami” before, or perhaps had but chose not to register it consciously as anything more than a big wave knocking over a few trees. Certainly, I had never seen one broadcast in real time and, God willing, hope to never experience such a cataclysm in my own life. But in the days and weeks that followed, survivor testimonies began to filter through the media outlets. These were not merely heart-wrenching but crystalized the experience as terrific and as awe-inspiring as any apocalyptic “end of the world” scenario Hollywood could concoct. Most definitely it must have seemed this way for Maria Belon and her family, come to the newly inaugurated Golden Palace Hotel for a little R&R over the Christmas holidays and looking forward to nothing more substantial than a week of lazy lounging on Khao Lak’s ivory sands.

This vacation, however, was to turn deadly for 230,000 people, a loss of human life so staggering that to discover even one survivor from this perilous afternoon seems more a miracle now than it perhaps did then. To learn of five – all in one family – is a phenomenon, as well as the subject of Juan Antonio Bayona’s The Impossible (2012). Bayona tells the tale from Maria’s perspective, albeit with one minor artistic flub: the Spanish Belon family has been morphed into a decidedly Caucasian/British brood headlined by Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor. Otherwise, The Impossible quickly acquires artistic integrity as an unrelenting portrait of heroism despite overwhelming tragedy. Its triumph of the human spirit genuine and satisfying.  

Bayona and his screenwriter, Sergio G. Sánchez have managed an extraordinary feat: to tell a true story in a compelling narrative without embellishing or twisting the facts. By Maria’s own harrowing account, we experience the epic wrath of the huge black wall of sea water smashing into bungalows, counterbalanced by excruciating moments of gut-wrenching fear racing through our protagonists’ minds. The drowning sensation Maria herself has described as “like being in a spin dryer” is realized for the audience in all its heart-palpating, nerve-jangling dread. The Impossible is not an easy film to watch – and not chiefly because we know the event being depicted actually happened, but rather because the performances given by Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor and Tom Holland seem so “of the moment” and “in the zone” of the close-knit Belons suddenly torn asunder by this swirling maelstrom.

Most disaster movies brutalize the audience, placating our morbid desire for catharsis. We are able to survive fires, floods and the proverbial gnashing of teeth all from the comfort of our plush theater seats or cozily snuggled up on the couch with a bowl of popcorn and favorite soft drink in hand. But The Impossible is different somehow,  almost documentarian in its approach, and it forces us to live through the nightmare moment by moment. The drama yields to an even more unquantifiable appreciation. By the end of the first reel we have completely set aside the premise that these are actors assuming just another role in their ever-expanding repertoires. Watts, McGregor and Holland manage no minor coup when they all but disappear from our collective consciousness, replaced by a haunted verisimilitude that gets under our skin and rattles a deepening trepidation with the even more daunting realization of finding loved ones still alive – if, in fact, at all – after the repercussion from those subsiding tides.

Our story begins predictably enough with the Bennett family’s arrival to the Golden Palace, a picturesque Thai resort newly opened to the public. Physician Maria Bennett (Watts), husband Henry (McGregor) and their three sons Lucas (Holland), Tomas (Samuel Joslin) and Simon (Oaklee Pendergast) have been looking forward to this getaway – particularly Henry, who fears that his job at a Japanese firm is about to be terminated. Director Bayona resists the urge to simply jump right into the thick of things. Instead, he conscientious sets up the story with a few choice scenes that establish the special loving nature of this close-knit family: Henry and Maria’s devotedness to one another and Lucas’ selfishness in his inability to understand Tomas’ fear of flying.

Bayona does an exceptional job recreating the relaxed cadence preceding the deluge. We observe the resorts’ guests partaking in a moonlight candlelit balloon launch, the sun-filled beaches a resplendent tropical paradise beckoning Henry and his sons to go snorkeling, the entire family submitting to a retirement from their worldly cares. Regrettably, this respite will be short-lived. For on the next day, as Maria prepares to curl up in her deck chair with a good book and Henry and the boys frolic in the pool, an unexpected shift in the breeze and the scattering gulls overhead mark fateful seconds of quiet repose before the disaster unfurls. 

Triggered by a cataclysmic earthquake in the Indian Ocean miles away, the initial tidal wave unleashes its fury: uprooting trees, tearing apart bungalows and flooding the resort with a mountain of murky salt water that consumes everything and everyone in its path. Maria and Lucas are swept away. Henry is unable to get out of the pool with either Tomas or Simon, presumed to have fallen under the crushing weight of the ocean. Director Bayona does a fairly brave thing with these scenes, silencing the soundtrack repeatedly as Maria’s head periodically slips beneath the raging waters – in effect, realizing the sensation of being drowned for the audience.

Against all odds Maria and Lucas manage to reunite, perilously clinging to floating debris until at last they are propelled far enough inland where the waters have receded, leaving behind their path of unbridled destruction. Compositing CGI with full-scale dump tanks and miniatures of the resort, Bayona manages to effectively recreate this incalculable annihilation while never once allowing it to anesthetize the audience in their complacency for more special effects. Maria’s leg is badly injured. Without proper medical attention she will surely die of infection.

Lucas and Maria discover a small child, Daniel (Johan Sundberg), who is separated from his family and trapped beneath debris. These three climb into a tree to relative safety to await rescue.  A local Thai father and son (La-Orng Thongruang and Tor Klathaley) find Maria, Lucas and Daniel and drag Maria – literally – to a nearby makeshift hospital where, due to a mix-up, Maria is labeled with another survivor’s name. Thus, after being encouraged to go and assist the others, Lucas returns to find Maria’s bed empty and told by the Red Cross Nurse (Jomjaoi Sae-Limh) that his mother has died.

We shift focus back to the waterlogged remnants of the Golden Palace where Henry, Tomas and Simon have survived. Henry entrusts seven-year-old Tomas to Simon’s care and sends his boys on ahead in a truck bound for the hospital while he sets out on foot to learn what has become of Maria and Lucas.  Injured by falling debris, Henry is taken to an evacuation center where various survivors share their stories. At first Henry is understandably numb. But when another man, Karl (Sönke Möhring), desperate for news of what has become of his own family, willingly offers Henry a chance to call home using his cell phone to explain what has happened, Henry is overwrought with crippling anxiety and hopelessness. Enough cannot be said of Ewan McGregor’s performance in this scene.  It’s so lyrically heart-breaking, so utterly true to the moment in its unraveling of his composure.

Bayona counterbalances this absolutely tremendous moment of realization with another – more understated, but nonetheless graceful. We see Tomas, having arrived at a rest stop for the night, quietly observing the twinkling stars in the night sky as Simon sleeps by his side. A kindly old woman (Geraldine Chaplin) approaches, asking if she may sit with him for a while. To this inquiry Tomas responds as any child might: “How old are you?” To which the woman replies: “Seventy-four. How old are you?” “Seven,” Tomas admits. In this single scene Bayona has captured the essence of the tragedy, impactful to both young and old, sparing no one, yet bringing everyone together.  

Now, Bayona telescopes his narrative into its ultimate reunion for the Bennett family. Lucas learns that Maria is alive, having survived surgery on her chest but still very weak and facing an even more arduous operation on her leg. Through a whim of fate the rescue truck with Tomas and Simon has stopped for a moment on the outskirts of the hospital, and Henry – his own search for Maria thus far come to naught – has also found his way into the wards.  Maria sees Henry through the heavy gauze of her curtain but is unable to call to him. Meanwhile, Simon, needing to use the bathroom, jumps from the back of the truck to relieve himself on the side of the road. Lucas, who has glimpsed Henry leaving the ward but has now lost sight of him, instead finds Tomas and Simon. Their tearful reunion is heard by Henry who cannot believe his great good fortune. Karl instructs the driver of their truck to move on. Lucas takes Henry to Maria’s bedside and after another successful surgery on her leg the family is ushered by their insurance provider aboard an airplane bound for Singapore – their ordeal at last at an end.     

The Impossible is perfect storytelling, not because it seeks to transform its narrative catastrophe into high art, but rather because it uses the visualized narrative fiction to humanize a story we only thought we knew from newsworthy accounts.  Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor give career-defining performances. The word “performance” usually defines the artifice in acting. But herein I use the term merely as a reminder of how seamless both Watts and McGregor are in resurrecting that raw emotional center of the piece, undeniably the movie’s greatest strength. Tom Holland is an old soul in a boy’s body, absorbing the character of Lucas as part of his DNA and taking on more ballast than one might expect, but never in a way that seems beyond the character’s years. 

Fernando Velázquez score is appropriately subdued and reverent. We get none of the deafening groundswells generally associated with this type of underscoring but rather a quiet, understated and all together effective bit or musical foreshadowing. Dídac Bono, Lek Chaiyan Chunsuttiwat and Marina Pozanco’s production design works its own minor miracle on a budget. The film’s singular flaw is Óscar Faura’s cinematography. I’ve stated before my zero tolerance threshold for shaky handheld camerawork. Faura’s is among the most equilibrium upsetting in recent years. There are other – better – ways to create visual tension. Masking your actors by constantly moving the imagery around doesn’t equate to creating visual art. It never does. It never will. Otherwise, at 114 minutes The Impossible is a succinct drama. It takes us on a terrible journey, but one that is ultimately life-affirming.

Eone and Summit Films have assumed the distribution for The Impossible in North America. Their Blu-ray delivers the hi-def goods, revealing the finer details in Óscar Faura’s copper-toned cinematography. The 1080p image is sharp without appearing to suffer from digital manipulations. The stylized contrast, boosted to bleach out whites, is well represented. The 5.1 DTS audio will give your speakers a workout, but dialogue early on seems thin and lacking in spatiality.  Extras are abysmally bad: two featurettes (each under ten minutes long) in which impressions made by principal cast and crew are distilled into mere snippets inserted between truncated scenes from the film. The audio commentary by Bayona, Sanchez and Maria Belon is far more astute and comprehensive at putting the pieces together for us. We also get a few scant deleted scenes and the original theatrical trailer. Bottom line: highly recommended!

Nick Zegarac is a freelance writer/editor and graphics artist. He holds a Masters in Communications and an Honors B.A in Creative Lit from the University of Windsor. He is currently a freelance writer and has been a contributing editor for Black Moss Press and is a featured contributor to online’s Subtle Tea. He’s also had two screenplays under consideration in Hollywood.  Contact him via movieman@sympatico.ca.