The Post

I thought I shake off my Call Me by Your Name infatuation for a while and write about something else like The Post. I saw the film just recently and I am moderately impressed, but still would recommend the film and give it my 4 out of 5. But no Oscars from me for the film or anybody related to the film. Just a well-made film, the story that kept my attention even if I knew the facts the film is based on. I could have filed my impressions somewhere in the memory without giving it a second thought if it was not for the nostalgia for the times that were honest and values that were idealistic. The film reminds us of that and I am thankful for it. Maybe there is a hope for us as a human race to turn to those idealistic values again. Well, I know it is pathetic what I write, but they are my naked sentiments and longings. Be they as they may. Looks like Spielberg has similar sentiments so I am in a good company with my nostalgia for honesty and truth.

                                    

The film is about the Washington Post or rather Katharine Graham making the decision to expose the Pentagon Papers and telling the public that the US government was hiding for years the fact that the Vietnam war was unwinnable. Publishing such news was a personal threat to Katharine Graham and Ben Bradley the editor of the newspaper.  This meant many years in prison and the decision was to be made by a woman who most of her life was just a daughter of the powerful father and then the wife of the powerful husband. It was not a comfortable territory for her, but she made her very courageous decision risking a lot. In the end, it worked out very well for the family and for the newspaper. And for her in many ways, I can imagine.

I liked the moment of her making the decision. She was not sure, she was scared and she remembered what her duty as the owner of the newspaper was – to inform the public of the truth. She makes a very hesitant statement with panic sounding in her voice – let’s go, let’s publish. And the history was made.

I have been particularly interested in women like Katharine Graham or Madelaine Albright at some stage of my life. I have read their biographies trying to find guidance on how to live after a major life disappointment. It helped to take some blinkers off and build up courage, but it required ripping out a lot of my idealistic self (Aciman returns) to carry on. Hence my special respect for the women. And the person I was myself some time ago.

               
                                                          My role models

Back to the film. I find the major value of the film in the reminder that it was possible (maybe still is?) to lead the media business in an honest (or at lease semi-honest) way. In the current times, money and power seem to be the only motivation in the world of the politics and the media. I am longing for some idealism and I am happy to realise that there are others who share my longing.

Looks that I am of the generation that looks back to the happy times of the 70ties and the 80ties and shakes the head at the current events as not measuring up to their happy days. My parents and grandparents did the same when my generation was coming on the scene. So, I know the changes are inevitable, but it still does not stop me from having nostalgic feelings and liking the film for waking them up. 

Call Me by Your Name - the book

Andre Aciman

                                             

I just finished Call Me by Your Name - the book. The second time. It almost reduced me to tears. Do I feel uncomfortable about it? Maybe a little and a little confused about my reaction. The book has universal appeal and most of the readers will likely find something in the book that they can relate to. The book about love, the love one longs for and seldom if ever experiences. I could say after the father of Elio “I may have come close, but I never had what you had. Something always held me back or stood in the way.” Thinking about my life it was just like that. I think I had an inkling that the love can be all-encompassing, uniting people to feeling one when “calling me by your name” is the description of the feeling. All too romantic, all too idealistic, all insensible? So why did I, together with so many people in the world got so moved by the book and the film? At least part of us longs for these ideal feelings. Or regret that they did not experience it.

I wonder what stopped me in the past from giving my all to another person. Was it a lack of the right object to desire and trust? Was is self-protection which equates to lack of courage? Maybe common sense? Too much self-control? Whatever it was I did not go the way Elio went. I know that Elio is just a figment of the imagination of some clever and sensitive men – Andre Aciman, the author, Luca Guadagnini the director of the film and Timothee Salamet – the actor playing Elio. But what they created touched so many nerves and emotions of so many people. There must be more to it than just sentimentality. If fact sentimentality is not what characterizes the book or the film. Just tender and deep feelings expressed masterfully and truthfully.

The people I thank for the beautiful story and feelings. The cast, Guadanino(far right) and Aciman in the middle. Enio is the one in the violet jacket 

                              

What Elio’s father says to his son who had to say goodbye to his lover is often commented on as an object of envy of parents who were not able to be that giving and understanding. One of the reasons why I read the book was to get the words of the father in this particular scene. They go like that:

“You had a beautiful friendship. Maybe more than a friendship. And I envy you. In my place, most parents would hope the whole thing goes away, or pray that their son lands up on their feet soon enough. But I am not such a parent. In your place, if there is pain, nurse it, and if there is flame, don’t snuff it out, don’t be brutal with it. Withdrawal can be a terrible thing when it keeps us awake at night and watching others forget us sooner than we’d want to be forgotten is no better. We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything – what a waste!

I may have come close, but I never had what you had. Something always held me back or stood in the way. How you live your life is your business. But remember, our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once. Most of us cannot help but live as though we got two lives to live, one is the mockup, the other the finished version, and then there are all those versions in between. But there is only one, and before you know it, your heart is worn out, and, as for your body, there comes the point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. Right now, there’s sorrow. I don’t envy the pain. But I envy you the pain. “

OK, so I am under the spell of the book and the film. I already ordered a couple of books by Andree Aciman. He is a writer, an academic and a university lecturer on Proust and this is worthwhile exploring as well.  And I will. Some posts will follow, no doubt.

In spite of writing about a book again, I have some life outside my home as well. I have seen the exhibition of Dutch Old Masters in the Sydney Art Gallery. Not too extensive, but some really good examples of the paintings of the time. It was good to take a walk through some green parts of Sydney. Did not move me that much as the book did though. Different pleasure, I guess.

The best film of 2017 – Call Me by Your Name

                                     

As I am up and about I decided to catch up on movies. I am glad that the first film I decided to see after the break was Call Me by Your Name. I believe that it will disappear from my local cinema soon and it would have been such a shame not to have seen it. I was not aware that this is another film by Luca Guadagnino. Not that I knew that another two films that made a particular impression on me were made by the same person. Now I see the very strong emotional similarities in all three films.  The other two are I Am Love and A Bigger Splash. It has been some time ago that I saw the other films and at that time I did not link them. The links that for me are strongest are between I Am Love and Call Me by Your Name. Both of the films show love or rather submission to ecstatic love in a similar way. Both made me a bit uncomfortable in the way they show the naked feelings of passion. Nothing vulgar about it, just so honest and natural that somebody, maybe a little prude like myself, finds it slightly uncomfortable. Those are touching and memorable scenes, though.

Both of the films show the tremendous beauty of Italy. The first one presents elegantly stylized interiors of a Milanese modern mansion and the other rather messy, but full of objects of considerable beauty and books, lakeside villa somewhere in the Northern Italy. And of course, abundance of Italian nature in both of the films as a background to uninhibited feelings.

Call Me by Your Name is a film about a young, very intelligent and sensitive, talented boy and his awakening sexuality. Sensuality is build into him through the environment he lives in and his absolutely incredible parents. I wonder if such parents really exist? My direct experience is of life in the middle-class situation and the film is about academics involved in higher artistic pursuits. Maybe this can make a difference and maybe the times are now of higher acceptance of non-conventional love? I still look at the film from a perspective of an older person who only watched the changes rather than lived through them.

   

So, it is about Elio, 17teen-year-old American-Italian who spends summer holidays with his parents in their villa somewhere in Northern Italy. Oliver the American graduate student of Elio’s father comes to spend some weeks with the family. He is given the room of Elio and gaining a description of ‘usurper’ said with a French accent. The dialogs are interchangeable English-Italian-French. The relationship starts with some reservations and almost unfriendliness towards the young American who says “later” to finish a conversation which Elio considers inappropriate and rude. This is how it sometimes is in early stages of love which has not yet come to realization of what it really is all about. Oliver is a very beautiful man and his physical beauty is shown as typically beautiful women are shown. He is not feminine at all though; his body is sculptured like Roman statues. And this is beautiful. 

Elio is at the stage of life when he is about to discover sharing his sexuality with another person. He does not have particular preferences as far as sex is concerned and I find it refreshing if not surprising. There is a girl he thinks of having his first experience with and then this fascination with this older then himself man takes over his senses and desires. Sharing on intellectual level takes precedence. And this is what the story is all about. The love between two men, true, romantic, homosexual love. And this is beautiful. I started to understand homosexual love, I think.

The role of Elio’s parents in amazing. At the early stages of the romance, the mother already sees what is going on and with full understanding what turmoil her son may be experiencing reassures him saying that Oliver likes him more than Elio likes Oliver. This is like an advice given by a more experienced person. While I had been in a similar situation with my mother supporting my first love it was a girl-boy type of love.  In the film, the support of the parent went further and this is the change of times, I noticed with some surprise.

Equally moving was a tender scene between Elio and his father who, knowing how difficult parting of the two lovers may be for his son, talks to him with deep understanding and empathy about the beauty of love in all its forms; sorrow and sadness being a part of it.

                                                   

At one stage the father said that the first love is most valuable and most powerful and that to each following one we have less to give. This I found particularly true. It explained some of my personal experience only too well. I think I may order the book on which the film is based on. Apparently, the scene between the father and son is taken verbatim from the book. There is also a different ending. Hmm… I am curious. Five out of five for the film.

Too much is too much - take two

I have been writing mostly book reviews in the recent months. This is perhaps because my life has been rather sedentary lately. First, I had to recover from a heart procedure and then I was nursing a cold that continued longer than I would have thought average. This imposed some restriction and reading was the best thing I could do. The thing is that I also liked it. When I was a child I liked to have a cold, to be excused from school, get my mother attention the way I was not getting it when healthy and I could read without feeling guilty. I still remember the pleasure of resting in a freshly made bed. In Poland, at the time of my youth, it meant starched and beautifully ironed sheets and the big fluffy pillows of the triple size to the Australian size of pillows. It was so comfortable, and my mother leaning over me touching my feverish cheeks with her cool and soft hand. She smelled so good…

Now, that I have to take care of myself in the situations when I am not well it is not that good and I do not have any incentive to prolong my illnesses. There is still this feeling of freedom of reading without any need to tidy up or do my taxes. The duties have to wait.

So, I have been reading more than I usually do and I have been listening to Polish news extensively. The later is rather self-destructive in the current political situation. I have not been writing about it as I wanted to suppress the feeling of sadness and desperation. This was a regular self-denial maybe connected with auto-censorship.

My previous post was titled “Too much is too much”. Different subject but the same sentiments. I woke up today with the profound feeling of sadness and realization that Poland I carry in my heart is about to perish. Just to be really pathetic, there is the link to what I have just written to the first words of the Polish anthem:

Poland has not yet perished,

So long as we still live

Well, so maybe not all is lost yet, but I am in a need to suppress the knowledge of recent Polish antics. How I will do it? I do not know yet. One thing is to stop listening to the Polish radio.

Now, that I have offloaded a little bit my depressing emotions, I will try to systemise my thoughts.

The current ruling party is not a party I would support. The leadership of the party is clever though. The cleverness, combined with ruthlessness, lack of respect for law and truth, nationalism, raging Catholicism, bigotry and much more I consider negative, lead to the party unprecedented supremacy in the Polish political world. The situation, that there has been in Poland for the past two years, put questions in front of many Poles that required taking the blinkers off. I am among those people. It has become obvious that the party, I had supported in the past, created the situation in which a take over of power was possible and actually necessary.  It was unavoidable and the politicians wrapped up in their own interest and egos were slowly cooked up like the proverbial frog that was cooked to death without realising the slow increase of the water temperature. So, the opposition has been cooked for a while and did not show any positive initiatives for quite some time.

And yesterday, was the day in the parliament when all hopes for a potential change of power were removed and removed by the opposition itself. The issue concerns women and their rights to termination of unwanted pregnancy. The Polish abortion law is restrictive in this respect.

Abortion in Poland is illegal except in cases of rape, when the woman's life is in jeopardy, or if the fetus is irreparably damaged.

In Europe, only Malta and Ireland have their abortion laws more restrictive than Poland. In addition to the restrictive law, many doctors have discovered their own CONSCIOUS. And this does not allow them to carry on any terminations or even to help their patients to find an alternative doctor whose conscience would allow to carry on the procedure. I am talking here about women who could lose their own life and leave a little child orphaned by design of the conscientious doctor.  Or a child who would not be able to live outside of the mother’s womb and she will still have to carry the child for all the months knowing the tragic outcome. I am not dramatizing here, there was such a case some months ago in Poland and the child was dying in pain for some days before its unavoidable early death. I better stop giving example as my stomach turns and the blood boils.

I am very upset with doctors who have “their conscience”. They say, they cannot intervene with God’s design. I am wondering what medicine actually is if not intervening in God’s design. And why women are taken away the ability to have their own conscience? Instead, the politicians decide what is good for them.

Obviously, I am very emotional about the whole issue, this may even mean that I have some blind spots. Possibly, but does not seem likely…

So, why I decided to vent my views on the subject today? Yesterday, during the parliament session a new proposal to relax the abortion law was presented and voted against with a great involvement of the opposition. A number of opposition politicians voted against the new project, some did not vote even if present, some did not show up at all. And the project was voted out.

For a change, another project to make the law even more restrictive (forbid the abortion regardless circumstances???) was voted to proceed.

I lost the remnants of my respect and trust for the opposition and I do not see in Poland a party I could vote for and I can not see how the current party could possibly lose the next election or two. There is no a leader to rescue the situation in site. To me, there is no hope, no opposition to the current ruling - only chaos. I am hoping that the country reached the rock bottom and now the only way is up. 

Too much is too much

                                                          

The book I started the year with was The Nix. It has been recently translated into Polish and my literary adviser said – Read it! It is fun, it's amazing! Even if it is a debut, I loved it! Laughed out loud! His wife and my dear friend confirmed that while Raf was reading the book she frequently heard laughter coming from his room. After the serious reading of several of Ishiguro novels, I thought it was time for something different. Something lighter. The Nix seemed to be an answer to my reading needs. Another big book. The number of 620 seems to be repeated in many reviews. I am not sure why the arithmetic is so important in relation to this book. It seems to be more important than it is with others. Hmm…

My first impression was – it is a well-written book. It reads easily, it is somewhat fun. However, the fun part is disputable. I have read the book in English so I am not sure how Polish translation could be funnier. There are general opinions, however, of the book being hilarious.  Not too me. It is not that I did not understand the author’s intentions, but what was meant to be funny, I found, in a way, depressing. It either made fun of people in psychological trouble or showed the problems with political correctness that at times leads to radicular situations and harmful to the society. Well, it was not only the subjects that stopped me from enjoying the fun parts of the book it was also a style with which it was presented. Not my type of sense of humour. This is, of course, subjective and cannot be taken as a negative of the book, but it has a lot to do with my personal perception and assessment of the book.

The storyline was promising and it caught my interest right from the beginning, as it was intended. For the first 300 pages, I was looking forward to the resolutions of the mysteries presented to the readers. And they are quite a few. I found one of the comments in Goodreads particularly apt and amusing:

Somebody writes:

“I have only started reading but i'm curious: do we ever find out why Faye leaves”

And the answer of Matt:

“ by the time you find out, you will have ceased caring”

And this is how the book is. Too much of everything. Too many storylines that get suspended for pages and pages. Too many characters that are described in big details. I must say it is done well, but too much is too much. The book reminds me of an excessively dressed up woman. She is pretty and the dress has many pretty elements. It has frills, sequins, pompoms, roses, violets, several patterns on the skirt: checks, lines, figures of children and cupids and many other adornments.  One can imagine that the overall look is not good. It is a little bit like this with this book for me.

It is not elegant writing. After Ishiguro’s constraint style I will be difficult to please in the writing elegance department.

Nathan Hill says that he wrote the book for himself as he did not expect it to be ever published. It was ten years of the author’s fun. It looks a bit like asking for admiration to me. It did not work with me. But generally, the reviews of the book are very good. It is an easy book to read, but this is not enough for me to classify it as a good book. This one needs serious pruning on several fronts. This way the readers could have more fun. At least some of us.

Not all the cliffhangers are explained satisfactorily. The story of Bethany and Samuel is really unconvincing to me and in so many respects that it discredited Nathan Hill in my eyes. The love stories in the book are really unconvincing, but the sex scenes are many and rather detailed. It looks like even if Nathan Hill was writing a book for his own pleasure, he did quite a lot to ensure that a wide spectrum of readers finds it pleasurable as well.

At the end of the book, there is time for some wisdom to pass on to the readers. It starts to read like a self-help book. There is the story of blind people getting to know an elephant by touch and they get a different idea of what an elephant is. They touch different parts of the animal. The moral: don’t jump to conclusions too early. Or “seeing ourselves clearly is the project of the lifetime”. Nothing wrong with that. I even like the one about seeing myself clearly very much. What is a bit strange is the condensation of the wisdom bits on the last pages.  

Well, I sort of liked the book and I think that the writer may have the future, he certainly has followers already. With some more life experience and discipline in writing, he could be a really interesting writer.

Between 3 and 4 out of 5 for me.