wmbogart's reviews
72 reviews

There are a few compelling ideas/connections here, around Fire Walk With Me as an act of mourning, Lynch's work in relation to broader traditions (e.g. melodrama and noir), etc. Some of the references and allusions felt a little unearned or under-examined, particularly in the chapter on road movies. There's a LOT of Freud and Lacan here (and in the films, obviously), and I can't get onboard with everything the author comes up with in those areas, but that might be my own (relative) lack of interest in those lenses as they relate to these films.

The sentence structures and writing style felt a little more conversational than I'd prefer, and a lot of the specific scene summaries and elaborations were a little dry for my taste. There were a lot of dependent clauses strung together here, and more instances of the word "palimpsest" than I'd have thought possible prior to reading. But I can appreciate the author's enthusiasm, and a few of the tangents and reference points made for interesting digressions.

Wasn't able to get onboard with the central premise here. I think the Bardo lens makes sense, but it's a little difficult to square that with the nonlinear structure of Lost Highway in particular. The characters transition to a new state, but that state is often predetermined in the film's sequencing. Nochimson pulls from the Tibetan Book of the Dead and claims the transition of these characters to a "lower" state is based on their failures to see the liberating potential of visions and existence beyond the "marketplace" (a lower, surface level reality, as opposed to the "palace" of existence beyond cultural/material constraints). Given what these "transitions" entail in Lynch's films, I'm not sure I blame them! There's a line about the typical Lynchian paradox where "actions already have consequences" but I have some pretty serious misgivings about that worldview and how Lynch applies it.

I think the framework works best with Inland Empire, where the optimism of a more fulfilled reckoning with an existence beyond the marketplace is realized after the ordeal, even if there's some moralism to get there. I have trouble seeing these "negative" examples of failures to move beyond in some of Lynch's other films as positive. The "here to here" journey is a throughline in his filmography, and I've never read Blue Velvet or Wild at Heart as insincere in the triumph of the final "here" where a domestic stasis is revived, albeit with the sinister undercurrents still lurking underneath or outside it.

I'm not sure the quantum mechanics aspect of this book is necessary. I wasn't convinced by it anyway. The general infighting among Lynch scholars (particularly in the endnotes) is always fun! Some of the vaguely sex-negative writing (although this is present in the films too) is not so fun. The interview with the professor that warns against misappropriating quantum theory is very funny after reading what I'd describe as exactly that.

Some of the best writing I've read on free jazz. It's a theory-heavy overview of the general approaches for a handful of free jazz luminaries. There's some light biography on each, and some social context in the introduction. Jost (correctly) makes explicit the limits of a purely notational or harmonic analysis of free jazz as a disclaimer, but the bulk of the book is a look at the music theory underlying each musician's style. The focus should always be on the social context and implications obviously, but these musicians were all brilliant artists, and their work warrants a closer look at the theoretical level too. Because it's so complex, you can only really scratch the surface in studies like this, but a couple case studies can show the musical depth behind what we hear when we listen to these records, to say nothing of the enormous ideological weight and import.

You really get a sense for what differentiates each musician's approach to improvisation and phrasing. A few key traits are highlighted: Coltrane is freed from vertical constraints in the early modal jazz before breaking it all open, Dolphy hits unexpected, often flattened intervals at focal points in phrases, Mingus has the breadth of influences, Coleman jumps off tonal centers to motivic improvisation before establishing a secondary tonal center, Don Cherry reintegrates a sense of the song form, Sun Ra is on another plane and experiments with timbre, etc. Each of these artists deserves a book-length analysis, but there's a lot here to orient your listening. It's maybe a little dismissive of Archie Shepp and later Ayler (as is Koloda's recent biography). But very much worth reading if you care about this music. And you should!

As you'd expect (I mean, look at that cover) this is a mixed bag.

A few of the essays are great!  Highlights: Alanna Thain's Rabbit Ears piece describes the "vibration-image" in Lynch, the use of light and (loco-)motion in Inland Empire, and the broader "problem of recognition" explored in his films. Gary Bettinson's piece locates Lynch in the midnight movie tradition, and finds in Eraserhead an initial structural unity that slides into disorientation. The midnight movie audience is interested in the communal experience of the dysphoric, whereas the "typical" audience may tolerate dysphoric imagery only in service of its eventual resolution. Greg Hainge pushes against Lacanian readings (and specifically McGowan's essay sequenced right before, pretty funny!) and narrativization in favor of a general cinema of attraction approach to (non-)reading these films. I'm summarizing, but you get the idea.

The apparent contradictions from essay to essay make for a fun read in any case. My level of interest in the psychoanalytical readings is probably lower than most, and there is some irresponsible, gross writing here. And I wholly disagree with a LOT of the ideas presented. A few of the essays read like a bunch of notes and "heady" concepts smashed together without development or evidence of how those concepts are present in the films. A handful could use a good edit, although the introduction and final piece by the "editor" were possibly the most in need of one.

I still have my misgivings about the guy, and a couple of the essays only played into those issues. But his films inspire a unique kind of passion and fervor in audiences that can't be discounted, and at the end of the day there is something there that we're all trying to grasp. More than anything this collection highlights the both the depth and abstraction of that something that viewers can feel but can't fully articulate or rationalize.

A difficult read, especially with how thin the veil is between "Sophie" and Taubes. It comes together as a portrait of a derealized self, in both plot and structure. "Sophie" is persecuted in every possible way; she emigrates from Hungary in the late 30s as a Jew, a psychoanalytical father tries to impose order and (a misplaced) rationale to her behavior, she faces an abusive husband (Jacob Taubes) and marital problems in both her own marriage and that of her parents, etc.

She's barraged by questions that she can't answer, from her family and her children and her own internal monologue. This comes across in different ways; a section is written as a surreal screenplay of a trial after her death, another is a chaotic, rapid dialogue with her children. Some sections have a terse, tense, austere writing style, where each brief sentence or thought seems hurried. Others (as with the tracing of her familial lineage) are more languid and conventional, but no less distraught.

Towards the end, there's a more sober analysis of her situation. She writes of "a second mind [that] liked to appear and vanish and change" and faces "pictures in her mind which didn't apply." In one section, she judges the unwell patients that visit her father, with the implication that she'd go on to internalize that judgment when she herself grew to face these things.

The changes in writing style and structure (and lens, from sober to surreal and back) could be an extension of these different "selves" on Taubes' part. Just as "Sophie" has trouble with self-actualization, the writing searches in different voices without settling on one that is her/its own. It suits the material and further entangles "Sophie" and Taubes in an honest, starkly vulnerable text.

Exactly what it claims to be - a brief, quick overview of the trajectory of Cahiers du Cinema. The author does a good job contextualizing the editorial and organizational shifts within the larger political landscape. In that way it becomes a pretty bleak case study in the degradation of a once-revolutionary institution into a largely worthless mouthpiece for distributors.

It's a quick read. Bickerton is willing to both commend and critique the "glory" years (be they the yellow or red years in your view). The actual criticism from Cahiers is only briefly summarized; you'll need to actually read Daney and Oudart and Godard and everyone else to get the actual picture. There's a general tracing of the auteur and mise en scene concepts over time here, from their origins in the early years to their total acceptance and eventual devaluation in film "criticism" today. But the more complex concepts are skimmed over in favor of a broad history of the magazine as a whole. Very high level, but it's a clear outline and as good a place as any to start.

All four are great, obviously. It's Duras. Some common themes run through the collection - dialogues between people at different stages of life, internal and external speculation about those stages and positions and the possibilities open or closed to each, etc etc. Read chronologically there's a gradual change in approach; The Square is a more austere dialogue relative to some of the lyricism and depth of setting in the latter two novels.

Very worth reading! Don't believe people that throw the whole "minor work" label around.

Continuing my summer of Cixous! I know deconstruction (and, gasp, post-structuralism) is grating for some. Not me! And with a title like this, obviously I'm going to read it.

Cixous takes the deconstructive approach in playing with words, their origins, homophones, tenses, to try to get to what "Jewish" might mean as a sign. She applies this to Derrida, not solely in a biographic sense but in the spirit of his writing and his thought. I don't think I ever consciously drew the parallel between this approach and the word analysis of Abraham Abulafia or Eleazar of Worms (neither of whom are mentioned here, just a connection from the breaking down of words into elements and the section on Pardes), but there's a case for deconstruction as rooted in Jewish tradition.

There's also a lot here on circumcision, and Derrida's Circumfession which, full disclosure, I've never read. Not just circumcision as a marker of Judaism, but what it means to cut or remove something from its origin and create a second origin in the event of removal. She writes that "all poets are Jews" sharing in "common exile." The poet is circumcised by language, as the language too is circumcised in translation. In philosophy and in the (at times tongue-in-cheek) wordplay, Cixous does somehow get to a portrait of Derrida in spirit and approach.

More importantly, perhaps MOST importantly not just in relation to the text but in relation to the world at large - take a look at the cover of this book. The one on this website. Is this the single funniest book cover? Has to be, right? It's incredible. Their poses, the angle of the photo, the typography, the layout, all very, very cool.

Pretty funny how cohesive and convincing this is - you'd never guess it's the same Paul we know and love today. Impressive that he got there as early as he did, before Deleuze fleshed out some of what he was picking up on. Fun to imagine this all as an attempt to reconcile his secular interests with his Calvinist upbringing.

Schrader sets out concrete techniques (delayed cuts, locked frames, little non-diegetic music, a focus on the everyday, etc) and a larger structure that ends in stasis after a decisive action and results in an activation of something in the viewer in closing in that stasis. He takes that (again, surprisingly well-written and thought out) framework and applies it to see how it might or might not result in a kind of "transcendent" experience on the part of the viewer.

It's all present in both Ozu and Bresson, with different views on "transcendence" (Schrader claims Ozu sees it in life, Bresson in a kind of death) but similar approaches beyond the cultural differences. The Bresson piece is the best here I think, if only because Schrader has the theological background to color it. He's clearly thought a great deal about the prison metaphor and its predestination/free-will implications, and is able to extend those implications to the viewer and their participation in films that forgo the typical dramatic devices. It made me laugh out loud when he recognizes his own use of the Pickpocket ending as problematic in this respect. Likewise with the whole non-narrative cinema diagram that plots maybe fifty directors (and a few entire movements) in relation to a "Tarkovsky ring" and within a "surveillance cam"/"art gallery"/"mandala" triangle. A hilarious, borderline unhinged exercise. Love it.

As far as the Dreyer chapter, it's mostly an exercise in comparing his criteria to someone that doesn't check all the boxes, to understand how these techniques do and don't function in comparison with Bresson. He does the same with Tarkovsky a bit, just to outline what does and doesn't fully embody the style he's laid out. But the Ozu and Bresson sections are the heart of it. The leap to seeing this all as "transcendental" is maybe a big one for some (and he's quick to acknowledge this), but it works for me. 

Thanks Paul. Hopefully UC Press puts out a collection of his social media posts one of these days so I can shelve it alongside this.

Very formally experimental, obviously. Thoughts and clauses cascade and then interrupt themselves, names don't have a concrete referent, etc. The writing is aware of and steps outside itself. At one point the book warns that the writing is becoming anachronistic - but isn't the juxtaposition of persecution throughout time (witch hunts, Kristallnacht, an undetermined future) the idea?

It's more about what it means to think about and write on atrocities in history, in the larger sense and in how we think about them collectively. Cixous has her mother's recollections, cities have the "preservation" of spaces and what is and isn't remembered in that preservation, survivors and academics are "recognized" and given "awards" out of an empty mutual obligation, etc. Histories remembered and misremembered haunt the text and the spaces and the survivors and their offspring.

Can't pretend I fully understand everything here. But hoping to read more Cixous soon.