Despite the obvious timeliness, this post will not be about the Oscars. I will leave that to my fellow bloggers on this fine publication who both saw more of the movies and watched the telecast.
Instead, I would like to talk about entertainment in other terms.
This weekend I had the luck/privilege to see three shows, two plays and one movie. I hadn't been to a play in a really long time, maybe since being at Whitman, and while there is no doubt that movies can create magical realities far outside the realm of realistic physical possibility, there is something to be said for good, live theater. It's just so exciting and live and I think part of the thrill is the realization that a mistake cannot be edited out.
I started my weekend on Friday by seeing "I'm Not There" which is Todd Haynes' very personal interpretation of the life, times, and work of Bob Dylan. The movie sees six different characters play "Dylan" but I got the sense it was intensely metaphorical, they each were to embody different portions of his life. The plot was tough to follow, this despite the fact that I am fairly knowledgeable about Dylan's life, major events, different phases, etc. By the end things seemed just totally out of control and confusing to just about everyone, although you could certainly pluck some themes out of the muck. That being said, it was a total mindfuck, there is no way in hell that Haynes could expect anyone to get all, or even almost all of what he was going for. Now I understand the point to this could be "brilliant" in that Dylan himself is hard to fully get. It also made me think that it would be interesting to see if Dylan liked the movie, maybe it was the first brilliant insight that really resonated with him, the guy isn't dead for god's sake!
The next night I went and saw Samuel Beckett's play "Endgame" which I got free tickets to since an old theater buddy of mine from high school was in the show. Beckett being Beckett (a lion in the avant-garde/theater of the absurd arena) you just want to fuckin choke the guy out at the end. The time, place, motivations and plot are all vague as shit, the director's liner notes said verbatum, "Beckett is challenging. There is no message. There is nothing to get." JESUS CHRIST. After two nights in a row of this I wanted to either go shop in Wal-Mart for 4 straight hours or move into a bus in Alaska (oh...wait), just anything for some meaning, something that made sense.
That led me to think about this whole "art" thing, I've always loved abstract art for example, and never really needed things to "make sense" to enjoy them, but I think there really is a line between being self-indulgingly specific and creative. Being confused just to be confused generally pisses me off unless I am completely prepared and in the right mindset.
That being said, on Sunday night I saw a wonderful one man show about neighborhood gentrification that made total sense to me. As I walked out of the theater I took stock of the neighborhood I was trudging through, all the changes since my childhood and things seemed and made sense.
Then someone said to me, "hey man, you read that ni**** Noam Chomsky? He's dropping mad science and if you don't know that you're a bitch ass faggot." Ahh Berkeley.
No comments:
Post a Comment