I've been thinking a lot about John Cassavetes lately, so I finally broke open the plastic wrap around the boxed set of Cassavetes films Mark gave to me last Christmas. I didn't expect to wait this long to break open the plastic wrap, but it's not an unfamiliar pattern. I have a knack for keeping new novels on the shelf for years. I won't even crack open a book until I have a gut feeling I'm in the right state to take it in, and I'm usually right about matching book to mood.
As far as Cassavetes: the fascination with faces, eruptions, moments of public embarrassment, people who won't (or can't) adjust to societal expectations. Life off the grid. I watched his first film, Shadows, last night. It's as mesmerizing as a poem, the signs of 1959 Manhattan--Fascination! Howard Johnsons Thom McCann--burning like suns over the night streets. The whole city as interior state: glamorous, depraved, a little sickening, but not hopeless exactly: interesting that such a dark movie could turn toward possibility, or at least ongoingness, in its final minutes without giving in to sentimentality. Tonight I can't decide whether I'm going to go in sequence, or skip ahead to the sublime A Woman Under the Influence. Below I've embedded the Shadows trailer--the music, by the way, is by Charlie Mingus--and Gena Rowlands' Swan Lake scene from A Woman.
It's only starting to dawn on me that the short pieces I've been writing over the last two years have been an attempt to think into my mother's dementia, through form. Even when I haven't been writing about it directly. The disruptions, the abrupt shifts in tone, the fluid identity, the nonlinearity. I might have known this intellectually, but in the days since her death--can it really be almost two weeks now?--I've recognized it on a deeper level. The clarity that the death of a loved one can bring. This morning, I already have the sensation that I'm not going to be writing the way I've been writing from here on out. I know it's not going to happen overnight, just the way it felt like we were still in the 90s until 2001. And have we really left the Bush years behind?
4 comments:
That's a pretty stunning insight about your mother's dementia and the way you've been writing.
Paul, I'm guessing you have the Criterion boxed set, which is one of my treasures. "A Woman Under the Influence" is one of my touchstone films. Gena Rowlands is absolutely amazing. I prefer "Opening Night" to "Shadows," and I wish they had put "Gloria" in the box. Have you seen Gena in Woody Allen's "Another Woman"? One of her best roles and one of Woody's most underrated films.
Collin, I decided to look at "A Woman Under the Influence" just after your note came in. What a feral thing! And much funnier than I'd remembered, at even the most devastating, heartbreaking moments. That feels like life.
The only puzzling thing: what are all those Long Islanders doing in the land of palms, presumably a down-at-the-heels Los Angeles?!
Yes, I do have the Criterion boxed set. I'm surprised that "Gloria" isn't included; I hadn't recognized that until you mentioned it. I'm looking forward to "Opening Night," which I've never seen. I'm sure it must include at least one of those humiliating moments on the stage. Did you know that JC was a singer at one point? He must have known well the pain of failed performance, which is why those moments recur in his work.
I always forget that it's set in LA, actually, because the film seems so insular to me. I always remember the story taking place in Mabel and Nick's house.
Gena Rowland's is beyond brilliant in Opening Night. It's disturbing in a different way, and nobody falls apart on screen quite like her.
I have my fingers crossed that Criterion will release Gloria soon.
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