Jeu

I was on the National Film Board of Canada's website today and found an interesting short animation film that I had seen on the Independent Film Channel earlier. I'm not too sure what it was about the film that caught my attention, whether it was the
beautiful excerpt of Sergei Prokofiev's Second Piano Concerto or the interesting movement of abstract art. Perhaps it was both.

The name of the film is Jeu and was created by Georges Schwizgebel. If you like the film and/or would like to know more about it or its creators, you can check out it's website at http://www3.nfb.ca/webextension/jeu/en/index.php. You can let me know how you felt about it by emailing me at DaveCB@optonline.net. Enjoy!

More on Synecdoche

I discussed the film Synecdoche, New York in my last entry and have watched it several times since then. Throughout the years, I've spent uncountable amounts of money on many things, many of which I'm not so proud. There have been a few occasions after which I'd felt I'd gotten my money's worth. Purchasing this film was possibly the most appropriate example I can recall. If there is one thing that links Charlie Kaufman's works, which include (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Being John Malkovich) together besides his name in the credits is that not one film would be a film I could imagine most people enjoying. In fact, during the screening of the film, it was reported that the film was "so weird that half the people left the theatre before the end, either confused or offended by what they saw.

I'm not going to lie and say "these people are idiots. They wouldn't know a good film if it smacked them in the face", but I would say that many people are forgetting that film is sometimes (not often) still an artform designed to simulate a message, a vital message. I'm not a Charlie Kaufman expert. I can't claim that I even begin to understand half of what he's trying to convey with the film. I do, however, understand enough that I felt myself to be an entirely different person after watching it.

The film is definitely a personification of illness, both mental and physical. It doesn't allow you to relax or even feel comfortable with yourself, with your life or certainly how you've been living it for however long you've been doing so. The world is filled with relationships that can only be justified with insanity and delusion. Many people will sacrifice ever knowing themselves just to try and be with a person they honestly have absolutely no interest in, but strive for it out of loneliness and self-destruction. Compromise is probably one of the most devastating human vices one can ever have, saying basically "I can't have my life the way I want it so I'll stop it here and make something out of this", having the only thing to look forward to be death, while throughout the entire duration of that lapse spending every second as if death will never come, as if neglecting its inevitability would erase its inevitability.

I wish that people would look away from The Hills and American Idol for two hours, turn their cellphones off and give a chance to see possibly the quickest wake-up call that ever existed, without being stubborn about it. It has been quite apparent throughout my experience that negligence never bettered any situation. Please, if you have not yet seen this film, do so. If you make it through to the end, without interruption, I guarantee you will want to see it again. This has been the most rewarding thing to me in a very long time.