Zizek Lives….
A mere year after’s its LFF UK premiere, Zizek’s fantastic companion piece to The Perverts Guide To Cinema finally gets its wide release this weekend;
I never bothered to finish my review, after twenty odd reviews last year I simply ran out of steam. In any case its a extraordinarily entertaining piece, with some fine insights delivered in his idiosyncratic style;
BFI London Film Festival 2012 – Day 12 Slavoj Žižek Interview & Q&A
And we’re done. My final day at this years festival was one of the highlights of the year, I bused it over to the Hackney Picturehouse to indulge in a discussion and Q&A with the worlds leading rock n roll philosopher Slavoj Žižek. He’s in town to promote The Perverts Guide To Ideology, the ‘sequel’ to 2005’s The Perverts Guide To Cinema, both directed by Sophie Fiennes (who was in the audience) they provide a brilliantly executed stage for Zizek to explore his critical theories on cinema and society, psychoanalysis and cultural studies, all through the prism of cinema’s hidden political codes and sigils, iconography and meanings. I’m a big fan of Zizek, he is unquestionably one of the great minds currently expounding on the art form, here are some articles which may tickle your fancy. I saw The Perverts Guide To Ideology earlier in the week and it is fantastic, probably the ‘serious’ cineastes film event of the year, in a similar way to Mark Cousins The Story of Film was for 2011 if that makes sense. There’s no clips or trailer yet so here is a quite glimpse of the preceding essay;
This event wasn’t so much hosted by Film 2012’s Danny Leigh as it was him asking a question and scurrying away from the circumference of the blast radius, for example his opening query on The Dark Knight and Žižek’s assertion that the entire film shows authority and the architecture of the state all posited on a lie and untruths, to which our bearded VIP made an unhesitating ten minute answer ranging from Nixon in China to West Side Story, from the Regan administration to the Israeli and Palestinian conflict pivoting on water rights, from The Sound Of Music to Brechtian theatre techniques – he is quite the orator as you can see here, skip to 11:10 if you wanna get past the intro;
Anyone who starts their thesis with this clip from They Live is bound to working in Minty’s favour, and some of his assertions and observations were stone cold brilliant, from his love of that scene detailing a working class drifter finally becoming aware of class battles and how it has to be a deliberately painful and protracted breaking of the shackles of false consciousness, or his thoughts about the Hollywood catastrophe film are always arranged around a Oedipal order, of how in Armageddon the rogue asteroid is in fact Bruce Willis unchecked libido destroying the world as he objects to Ben Afflecks fucking his daughter Liv Tyler as a violation of his patriarchal order – well I thought that was funny. In the film essay he also makes the brilliant point that we, as a society, are perfectly conditioned to enjoy and revel in spectacles of destruction, of planet annihilation events such as plagues, alien invasions of catastrophic natural disasters, but we cannot and do not let films exist where even a slight change in the distribution of wealth in society, of a more egalitarian sharing of resources and money is never explored, as these texts simply don’t exist – and why is that?
Many people reject this sort of material as pseudo intellectual academic pretentious art-wank and maybe they have a point, I think its fascinating but that’s just me. He also remarked that he likes to play a game with his fellow academics such as Frederic Jameson where they take a neglected or inferior Hitchcock film and argue that it is a misunderstood masterpiece – Jameson opting for Stage Fright, he for Under Capricorn – simply as a critical theory brain exercise. I’ll bet they are great fun at parties too…..
So that’s another LFF done, my most ambitious coverage yet, in terms of recommendations then I must highlight Amour, Argo, West of Memphis and probably Seven Psychopaths, for the more discerning viewer I can also offer Dreams For Sale, Compliance and Helter Skelter. I’ve still got one more review to scribe and I can rest. Well, apart from tomorrows Rust & Bone screening. Oh, and that Holy Motors review isn’t going to write itself. And The Master is out soon and I’ve got to see Beasts Of The Southern Wild this week. I should also see Skyfall as that will be one of the years big films. Then there’s the two horror classics early next month………
Flotsam & Jetsum IXX
Firstly, some general nonsense I’ve collated over the past couple of weeks or so. Slavoj Žižek has to be one of the most entertaining cultural theorists of the moment, to get a feel of his world view and opinions it’s best to start with his recent Weekend Guardian Q&A responses that should give you some insight into his idiosyncratic style and discourse. He first came to my attention of course with his treatises on cinema (Text heavy) and film, mostly due to a fantastic feature length examination of psychoanalysis in cinema during ‘The Perverts Guide To Cinema‘. Make of that what you will, I find it fascinating even if much of his theories are nothing new (particularly in regard to Hitchcock) but his riffs on more recent movies such as ‘ Children Of Men‘ are superb. His almost comical accent and presentation is ripe for parody of course, look beyond that facade and you can see an extraordinary mind in operation. So no, I haven’t spent my two months off work sitting in my pants watching Jeremy Kyle. Pretentious? Maybe. Absurd? Perhaps. Entertaining? Utterly, thus it merits some attention. Zizek is pretty absurd as well…..
I’ve ploughed through ‘The Corner‘ in the past two days in order to maintain my fix of the mean streets of West Baltimore given that ‘The Wire’ has finally finished. It’s an adaption of David Simon’s reportage of the same name, a six part series that concerns a year in the life of a family torn apart by the drug and gang culture crippling the city. Simon followed a real family (who make an appearance in the final scenes in a genuinely moving moment) so it’s much more of a intimate portrait than the macrocosm of ‘The Wire’ and you can see much of the same ground being covered, the same issues and problems raised, the same overwhelming portrait of living, breathing characters unfolding before your eyes. I don’t quite know how they do it but even when characters are doing stupid, terrible things you understand why and even feel some pangs of sympathy. It was a pleasure to see TK Carter who of course you’ll recognise as Nauls from ‘The Thing‘ in a central role whilst also spotting many of ‘The Wire’ crowd, namely Freamon, Chief Daniels, Wilson, heck even Prop Joe and Landsman get a look in. Bleak, uncompromising and utterly essential viewing.
I’ve had some time on my hands so have decided to launch something of a new side project on the blog, namely collating links in these random posts to the finest moments (that I can find on-line) of films by directors who I hugely admire that are still working today. No specific reason for Jim Jarmusch kicking off this idea, if I’m honest I just felt a compulsion for taking another look at ‘Dead Man‘ which is without doubt one of the greatest Westerns ever made. Perhaps this is in response to my viewing ‘McCabe & Mrs Miller’ which has served as my penultimate review of of my upcoming Minty commentary on four Altman films. Regardless, Jarmusch is one of the great alternative American film makers of recent years and should be celebrated. Can’t wait for his new film.
I’m not sure how long this ‘project’ will last as it seems that I have finally landed a new assignment, subject to a brief meeting with the authorities service director in a couple of weeks. The bad news is that’s it’s in Folkestone of all places which means a bastard commute, the good news is that it will be all expenses paid (train, cabs, phone and infrequent overnight stays) and should enable me to accrue enough of a warchest to take the first quarter of 2009 off should I manage to string it out until Christmas. I won’t bore you with the details except to say that ‘The Wire‘ (audio, massive spoilers) has offered a instructive insight into what I shall be doing on this one (I’m joking, well at least partially – Folkestone ain’t Baltimore), appreciating the inter-relationships between different authorities, groups and stakeholders and their specific political (yes that’s small a small P for political) agendas whilst managing what needs to get done – I’ll take the McNulty approach. Apologies for the in-joke. Amyway, given that I’m planning to revisit Season 1 shortly that’s exactly the excuse I’ll use if anyone queries those 13 hours of weekend overtime on my first invoice….I’m joking of course you fucks, here’s some more parochial web nonsense, now stay out of trouble…..
Minty's Menagerie 
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