The Rink

 

THE OPEN ROAD

peace, love, happiness & understanding

 

 

April 6, 2023

 

I invited some friends to write something about their favorite films…

When we read a great book, we want all our friends to read it. When we watch a great movie, we want all our friends to see it. 

For the next issue of peace, love, happiness & understanding, which comes out on April 6th, write something about movies, films, or tv shows that you love.

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Prabu’s film “In the Beginning” reminded me of the old, scratchy, haunting film “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” based on a civil war story by Ambrose Bierce. Much darker than what Prabu offered us, but a similar visual narrative of a man trying to negotiate a mysterious world.

https://vimeo.com/15147706

 

—Kim Stafford

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At the top of my list is “Ted Lasso.” The improbable premise of this tv show is that the central character is nice. He’s generous to everyone. He has a corny sense of humor. He’s a good man. Whoever thought you could make stories about someone like that? The film that first came to mind is “Wings of Desire” by Wim Wenders. It’s about angels, who are invisible to most people, who help us to reduce stress and think positive thoughts by their presence. They are immortal, but they are missing out on many human pleasures, like the smell of coffee. Nancy and I love the films of Wes Anderson. Our favorite is “Moonrise Kingdom.” Of Coen brothers’ films, it’s a toss-up for me between “The Big Lebowski” and “Hail, Caesar!” I love the Australian film “Bliss” (1985), based on the novel by Peter Carey. Another classic is Terry Gilliam’s hilarious dystopian vision “Brazil” (also 1985!). I love the early silent films of Georges Méliès. “The Kingdom of the Fairies” (1903) is especially good. For physical comedy, Charlie Chaplin’s “The Rink” remains unsurpassed.

 

—Johnny Stallings

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A favorite film of mine is, ‘The count of Monte Cristo’.

It embodies the tireless effort for justice, and a will to not give in to the deeds of those that seek ones demise.

The character, Edmond Dontez (later, the Count) is someone I could relate to while in captivity (prison). He spent 16 years seeking a way out, to avenge the wrongdoings of his peers. 

He eventually did, and along the way, learned many other lessons about life and forgiveness.

Essentially for me, the story/film is an inspiration to never give up or give in. And to never forget where I came from, for it is fuel for my fire. 

 

—Brandon Gillespie

 

Thanks for the invitation Johnny.  A few ideas:  

    

As for happiness, along with some heartbreak and comic flair, it’s hard to beat the book This Is Happiness by the Irish writer Niall Williams.  I felt like I was living in a village in county Kerry the whole time I was reading the book. In the end I felt like I had made new friends, been wrapped in a prayer blanket, fed a good meal and sent home along a winding green path with a fiddle tune and a song. It made me hopeful, appreciative and aware of the happiness lurking in my own backyard.  Superb writing! 

    

As for film, “The Mission” (Robert Dinero) comes to mind not because of peace or happiness but because of understanding and the meaning of redemption and forgiveness.  The music is sublime and the scenery stunningly beautiful.  A sad reminder as well of what  artistic and cultural creations might have been had peace, love, understanding and imagination prevailed over avarice and greed.  

     

Opening day of baseball season always makes me happy.  Here’s a poem I wrote about it.  Love and Play Ball!!! Will  

 

Why Baseball Matters

 

Because in a world obsessed with time, baseball is a past-time.

Because any game could theoretically last into eternity.

Because baseball is played on a diamond. 

Because in a world obsessed by success even the best hitters fail two-thirds of the time.

Because, as George Carlin reminded us, football is about “ground and aerial attacks”, and “marching down the field” while baseball is about “staying safe and coming home.”

Because what other game has characters named “Goose, the Big Hurt, the Left Hand of God, the Splendid Splinter, The Say Hey Kid, the Sultan of Swat, Catfish, Hammerin’ Hank, Cool Papa, the Bird, Big Papi, The Man of Steal, Satchel, the Big Unit and the Iron Horse?”

Because the crowd takes a stretch and sings together at the ballpark.

Because despite all efforts to improve the game, baseball remains blessedly slow, wonderfully conversational, deceptively complex and enjoyably simple.

Because outside of going to the park, baseball is best experienced on a radio broadcast where gifted storytellers usher us daily into a theatre of imagination. 

Because pitchers deliberately baffle, confuse and confound with “curves, sliders, splitters, sinkers, screwballs, knuckleballs, fastballs and change-ups.”  

Because almost every day from April through October millions of boys and girls, women and men play a game made in America before the Civil War and now beloved from Japan and Korea to Cuba, Australia, Venezuela and beyond.

Because as Leo Durocher said: “Baseball is like church. Many attend, few understand.”  Yet, I would add: all can be uplifted and enjoy.

Because as a Boston fan once said: “Baseball is not about life and death. But, the Red Sox are!” 

Because these days it just feels good to shout: “Play ball!” 

     

—Will Hornyak 

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For me, THE RULES OF THE GAME, by Jean Renoir, is a great humanist document that happens to be a movie rather than a novel or play….It is a luminous farce that depicts a weekend at a country estate. The classes, represented on the one hand by the owner and his guests, and on the other by members of the staff, especially a maid and a gamekeeper, are assiduously separated: one serves, the other receives. But at the same time, they all meet and merge as equals in games of love and deception. Renoir misses nothing, and forgives everything.

A more recent movie that moves me is THE RIDER, by Chloe Zhao, an almost-documentary that tells the story of some Pine Ridge “Indian cowboys”, who make brief and destructive livings as rodeo riders. The characters play themselves. I’ve watched this three times, and will watch it a fourth.

Oh, and also about RULES OF THE GAME; it’s funny as hell.

 

—Ken Margolis

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What is it about peace that its story is not enduring?

 

Wings of Desire, a 1987 film directed by Wim Wenders

 

The aerial shots of Berlin so long before drones. The use of space both physically and visually. The plants in the library. The stand-up desks in the library. The angels in the library. The soft leather seats in the sports car in the showroom where the angels meet to compare notes. The desire for that car from the people looking in. The miracle of being able to watch this movie again in the kitchen 36 years later. The world of humans is in color. A friend and student expressing aversion to angels when I read a poem to a recent class that had a passing reference to them. The discussion that followed over days and walks about this dislike of angels she didn’t even know she had. The drawing on the wall at the circus behind the elephant. The robe on backwards to protect Marion’s chicken feather wings. Nick Cave on the portable phonograph. Looking for the right hat. The trapeze artist in a tuxedo cat suit with a long white tail. But the story of the grass, the sun, the leaping, and the shouting that is still going on as well. Sometimes beauty is the only thing that matters. Chest armor falling from the sky. The revelation and joy in color in a gray gray city. The mural of a ruined building on an intact one. The pile of sawdust the circus left behind. No one saw the carney go. The shared wine glass filled almost to the brim.   

 

—Elizabeth Domike

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This is a fun idea, Johnny.  

I particularly like movies based on books. Even if I loved the book, I like watching how it was made into film. From the many Jane Austen’s to “Bridget Jone’s Diary,” in which Salmon Rushdie plays himself in a tiny part. The renditions of “A Room with a View” to  “Little Dorrit.” 

My favorite film, that stands up over 50 years, is “Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison,” directed by John Huston. Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr, a marine and a nun, are stranded on a Japanese-invaded island during WWII.

Bill likes old and new foreign films—Iranian, Japanese, French, Irish, Indian, the farther flung the better. Our favorite series ever is “Heimat”–that begins at the end of WWI with a family living above their cow in a small village, up through that family’s  youngest living amongst his creative fellow artists in the city in the 50’s. Rotten tomato reviewer writes about it: “Edgar Reitz’s Heimat is not just a brilliant film about Germany. It is a brilliant film about our time, anywhere—perhaps about any time anywhere.

I’m excited to see everyone’s reviews!

 

—Katie Radditz

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I want movies to move me. 

Two films, totally opposite from one another on the surface, would be my faves of all time. The Crying Game and The Lives of Others are both about love, courage and compassion.

My short take on The Crying Game is that Love Conquers all; love remains love, in spite of its being turned on its head in a very unexpected way. 

The Lives of Others, a German film, takes place in 1984, 5 years before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Stasi, the German version of the Nazi SS, is in operation, and Captain Gerd Wiesler is assigned the job of spying on a couple suspected of national dissident activity. The Captain is dry, hardened, methodical and dispassionate in his work (as he has been his whole life). However, as time goes on, he begins to care for his subjects (to his own puzzlement and fear).

Ultimately, love and compassion conquer, and he does the right thing, makes the difficult, moral choice, to his own great peril. I love this. 

Others have different viewpoints of both these movies; this is what makes them both compelling, and grand.

—Jude Russell

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A Smile in Abjection

notes on the opening credits of Withnail and I

 

My favorite frame in cinema is this one: Paul McGann as Marwood, the “I” in Withnail and I, just one minute into the film. We have drawn closer and closer to him as he smokes a cigarette that clearly brings no pleasure, his eyes shifting and shifting and finding no solace. And as the saxophone of King Curtis carries us gently through a live cut of “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” Marwood appears to reach some far limit within himself, and his torment suddenly eases, or it pauses to breathe, or Marwood simply parts it like a blackout curtain. He lifts his eyes, and we perceive a smile that is almost not even there. Perhaps we have just imagined it. Perhaps Marwood himself has imagined it.

 

 

Can you see it? I can. It is the mark of a wild, mad hope. I am certain it is there, the smile, because I have been there, and I have smiled it. It is an abject smile, a desolate smile, a smile with sweat on its forehead. Undramatically, I tell you that it is no less than the smile you face death with. I have been hunted by forces within me and without, cornered and shivering in a sweater, smoking far beyond any desire to continue smoking. And yet I would also, in those midnights, hallucinate some star, some aberration of logic in which I could discern a reason to hope. Marwood is looking upon that star, smiling upon it, and I, too, have seen it.

 

—Alex Tretbar

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Andrei Rublev:

Andrei Rublev is a biographical film about a medieval Russian iconic painter.  In the movie you can hardly see Rublev touching the brush. It is a movie about the formation of Rublev as an artist, especially an artist living under an oppressive regime. It effectively shows that an artist is society’s conscience. 

 

Tree of Life:

Terrance Malicks poetic masterpiece that attempts to capture all of existence through the lens of a boy growing up in the American midlands.  As per the great film critic Roger Ebert “the only other film with this boldness of vision is Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and it lacked Malick’s fierce evocation of human feeling.”

 

—Prabu Muruganantham

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Dear Reader

For next month (May 4th), send me something about books that changed the way you see, experience, or understand the world.

 

peace, love, happiness & understanding

—Johnny