Carpe Diem

More than 2000 years ago, Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace), a Latin poet, found himself looking rather bemused when he noticed how busy Rome had gotten. His advice was the following: “be smart, drink wine. Scale back your long hopes to a short period. Even as we speak, envious time is running away from us. Take hold of the day, for in the future you can believe in the minimum.”

Life is short, time is fleeting; enjoy now, seize the day. Carpe diem became a widely used theme in the 16^th and 17^th century in love poetry: A well-known example is Robert Herrick’s poem “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”, because “this same flower that smiles today/Tomorrow will be dying.”

In 2006, Tokio Hotel, a German band, wrote a song titled “Live The Second”. The refrain is stuck in my head: “Live the second/Here and now/Hold it tight/Or else it’s gone”. Although the quality of the lyrics certainly does not meet Horace’s standards, the message has some resemblance: “Sorry but I was just contemplating/But for that there’s really no time/No time.” We are too busy…

Carpe diem is no longer seize the day, but seize it at its fullest, every second. It should not be that surprising that Carpe Diem has become a marketing brand, covering an assortment of high-energy drinks. On its website, the company explains the philosophy behind the name and the products: “seize the day because today is the first day of the rest of your life.”

From this perspective, whatever carpe diem has gained in intensity, it seems to have reduced its meaningfulness. It has become linked with narcissism (an excessive interest in oneself) and hedonism, the latter putting pleasure as the highest good and proper aim of human life. This is the world as personified by Hugh Hefner, the founder of Playboy. But this is my dad’s generation; would people like Paris Hilton and similar “professional party celebrities” qualify?

Fortunately there is an alternative. Although “carpe diem” is commonly translated as “seize the day”, the verb “carpere” literally means “to pick” or “to pluck”. A farmer or gardener picks a fruit or vegetable, he or she knowing when it is ripe. “Plucking” or “picking the day” sounds as awkward as “seizing an apple” but the comparison is relevant because it opens a deeper meaning of carpe diem. “Seizing an apple” means simply taking it, nothing more nothing less; “picking” implies a decision process (choice) which includes some thinking before (knowledge) and accepting the consequences afterwards.

There is nothing wrong to refer to “seize the day” as long as it has a deeper meaning to it. This is precisely the case in the hit movie “Dead Poets Society”, a film that explores the substantive idea of carpe diem from the viewpoint of a classroom of young men at an all boys boarding school. “Carpe Diem! Seize the day, boys! Make your lives extraordinary!” says Robin Williams; character, Professor Keating, in the hope that students will learn to do what they want to do.

Carpe diem really comes down to grabbing opportunities that life throws at you, so allowing one to become a better person. However, I don’t think there is anything wrong, after a tough school year, in enjoying life “the Paris Hilton way” for a week or two, as long as it does not turn into a permanent way of life!

Now that you have read until the end, stop wasting time ;)

Can revenge be justified?

“Sleepers” is a shocking movie, dealing with the sexual abuse of four boys in a New York state reformatory in the 1960s. Fifteen years later, two of them, who have turned into criminals, encounter by chance their main tormentor and kill him. The other two, by now successfully integrated into society, conspire to get their childhood friends off the hook. Is this justifiable?

What is revenge? According to the Oxford Dictionary, it is “retaliation for an injury or wrong”, or “the desire to inflict this”. I want you to suffer the same pain (injury, insult) that you have inflicted upon me. This is not just justice; it is personal justice, tit for tat. Revenge emphasizes emotion, not necessarily reason.

The expression “an eye for an eye” has religious roots (the Bible). It was meant to limit revenge, going back to some ancient societies where, to deter murder, the victim’s family was allowed to avenge the killing. There was an additional advantage: only God had the moral authority to exact revenge. Today, despite the fact that most civilized societies consider this barbaric, there still exists religious punishment the old way (cutting off the hand of a robber, public stoning). The problem is difficult to challenge this is “approved” by God or reflecting his will. As we also (unfortunately) know, religions can further encourage revenge as they clash or if one feels his religion has been insulted. In all fairness, most religions do teach forgiveness, which is the opposite of revenge.

Contemporary judicial systems are no longer built around personal revenge, the latter having been replaced by societal justice. Righting a wrong in a fair way has shifted its focus from the victim to the crime. A sentence should deter a criminal to do it again and make others think twice. I read the following example which explains this. A couple of years ago, a Canadian farmer got enraged with a teenager damaging his garden. Trying to arrest him, he accidentally shot the teenager in the neck. His sentence was 6 years, later reduced to 4 years. The victim’s family, referring to the killing instead, was outraged. Yet there is no need to go back to a legal system centering on revenge.

Unfortunately the legal system has its limitations. It is not free of human error. Sometimes a sentence is not fair, creating a new wrong in place of the one that it is seeking to rectify. A criminal feeling that way can hardly wait to get out of prison and is likely out for revenge. An innocent person might be sentenced, which in the case of the death penalty cannot be corrected. As “Sleepers” so painfully demonstrates, there is also the very real possibility of corruption. It is painfully understandable that in such a circumstance a wronged individual wants to take the law in his or her own hands. In a way, society has wronged him (her). On a one-time basis, I can see justification for revenge. My fear however is that once you start to generalize there is the real risk of undermining the whole judiciary system. Systematic approval or use of revenge outside the law is not justifiable. This is obvious in the case of gang culture, family honour killings but less easy to accept when there is systemic corruption. Using once an orchestrated trial to establish the truth is one thing, a systematic manipulation of the legal system is a different matter.

Can revenge be a constructive force? There have been a lot of killings in the black community in London. Confronted with the death of her son, a mother was asked if she felt any revenge. Her answer was no, she could not; how could she if she had no hate in her heart? At the same time the girlfriend was overheard saying that she hoped that “they would rot in hell”. Can the suffering of the killer provide closure to the victim’s family? I respect the mom’s opinion, but I’m afraid that my heart too would be temporarily filled with anger and hate; this is nothing to be ashamed of.

One final thought about the movie. It took 15 years before revenge happened. The reason: no one was looking for it, each one having decided, after their release from the reform house, to go on with their life. By suppressing that part of their past, they also left no choice for whoever was sent to the reformatory (and similar places!) after them, but to be abused too. Could Lorenzo, a newspaper reporter, and Michael, an assistant district attorney, have done anything earlier instead of writing until chance brought upon them the opportunity for revenge?

STOKER

On the 17th of February, I got the chance to attend the special preview of STOKER with an introduction by Park Chan-Wook himself, the acclaimed Korean director of Oldboy and Thirst.  When I arrived at the cinema, I was surprised to find queues of people outside the entrance and the interior all decorated. It turned out that the premiere was taking place at the same time. I missed out on meeting the actors (all 3 main characters attended) but at least I got to see the film. Here are my comments on  the film. Warning: Spoiler alert!

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“The story is about a young girl’s journey of self discovery and coming of age.

Now it’s a fact we all know that every young girl is special.
So of course this is the story about a special young girl.

Every story about a special young girl should be special like a fairytale or a dream.”

Park Chan-Wook

STOKER is Park Chan-Wook’s first English-language film. It was originally written by Prison Break star Wentworth Miller under a nom de plume, making his feature writing debut. In the words of the director, "It wasn't a film centered on dialogue and there were a lot of parts that were expressed without words". He enjoys expressing things visually and with sounds rather than words. Apart from describing Stoker as a thriller with aspects of horror and romance, Park calls it a "fairy tale". "I was interested in girls' coming-of-age stories - as with I'm A Cyborg But That's OK. I liked that the story had few characters so we could observe them more closely, not just superficially. I look for density in my films." STOKER is a mixture of a warped thriller, a gothic fable and some of Park Chan-Wook's trademarks. 

“India, is something wrong? Yes. My father is dead.”

He was taken away by a cruel twist of fate, reasons which are unknown. 
“People (just) disappear all the time (on you )”.

Led by a brilliant Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland, Restless, Lawless) as an introverted honor student/teenager whose personal and sexual awakening coincides with the unravelling of a macabre family mystery. When India Stoker loses her beloved father Richard (Delmot Mulroney) - he dies in an apparent freak car accident on her 18th birthday - , her globe-trotting Uncle Charles, portrayed by Matthew Goode (Match Point, Watchmen), whom she never knew existed, comes to live with her and her emotionally unstable mother Evelyn (Nicole Kidman).

Soon after his arrival, India comes to suspect that this mysterious, handsome, charming “Uncle Charlie” has ulterior motives apart from “to be friends.” “Uncle Charlie” swiftly cements himself in the household by seducing her mother. Shortly afterward, their housekeeper disappears without notice; same goes for India’s meddlesome aunt (a brief but sharp performance from Jacki Weaver), who appears to know troubling truths about the intruder, dismissed out of hand by Evelyn. The "is-he-or-isn’t-he the killer" question is answered sooner than Hitchcock would have planned it, as India’s darkest instincts about Charles are confirmed by the end of the first half of the film. However, instead of feeling outrage, horror and running to the police, this friendless girl becomes increasingly intrigued and infatuated with him. She can relate: “Secrets, lies, murder…it’s in her blood.”

However, there’s still plenty of Wentworth Miller’s warped family melodrama, as the respective and inevitably linked uncertainties about Richard’s death and Charlie’s long absence are kept aloft, while Charlie is slowly playing India and Evelyn against each other adding queasy sexual tension to an already distant, chilly mother-daughter relationship. In the words of Charles Stoker, “she is of age” to discover her true nature and thus “to become adult is to become free”. Her mother no longer recognizes her: “Who are you?” India, at first surprised, knows full well who she is: a photo of you when you are not aware of it, in an angle which you cannot see in the mirror, is part of who you are.

Visually and aurally, in terms of the filming and music, the movie is gorgeous.

India’s transition is beautifully portrayed through, for example, a series of different sizes of black or white saddle shoes and finally pointy high heels given to her as birthday gifts. “Just as a flower does not choose its colour, we are not responsible for what we have come to be” is illustrated by pure white flowers being splattered by blood. “Innocence ends” is shown by contrasts. There are two scenes that come to mind.The first shows a shower scene: the whiteness of the bathroom is ruined by the mud, dirtied clothes are left on the floor. She takes a shower to wash away the past events but the audience soon finds out that she is turned on by them. The second scene sees India eating ice cream next to a freezer which contains a dead body.

The audience is treated to parallels all through the film. For example, we get glimpses of spiders or a tv programme on birds of prey. We can quickly understand that India is much like her Uncle Charlie, she is a natural born killer/predator.

The plot is a bit predictable since one already suspects early on that the uncle is behind the inexplicable death of Richard but we don’t know what his motives are. The audience quickly realizes that India has a morbid side to her. She would go hunting with her father and preserve the kill as a child. She stabs a bully with her pencil, bites a classmate and later beats the guy up. Her anger subdues but the violence escalates. She shoots a man and then stabs an officer in cold blood and with a smile. However the way the relationship between India and Charlie ends will surprise.

Mia Wasikowska  is very good playing off Matthew Goode, who is well-cast as Uncle Charlie. The growing tension between the characters is very well executed. There is a powerful piano scene where both play together and we witness the evolving effect the uncle has on India at close proximity. There is something corrupt and compelling. about Goode’s good looks, something crazy just under the surface. It worked for him when he played Ozymandias in “Watchmen,” and he embodies his character here with a dedication that is impressive.

Kidman has some great lines but is less well-treated by the material and she seems somewhat stranded in the role of Evelyn. Even though the relationship between mother and daughter is cold and put to the test by Charlie, I didn’t know what to make of the Wasikowska and Kidman combination. There was something missing; maybe that was the point?

This beautifully designed and scored picture will shock as many viewers as it enchants. Park’s film stands to be treasured not just by his existing band of devotees, who should recognize enough of the “Oldboy” and “Thirst” director’s "loopy" eroticism and artistically distinctive mises-en-scene, but by horror aficionados and even a small group of teenagers who have outgrown Twilight. Fans who have followed the Korean director since 2003's Oldboy will not be disappointed; and a high creep-out factor and top-drawer cast should attract genre fans who have never heard of him as well.

“I hope you enjoy this dream as much as I enjoyed dreaming it up.”          

Park Chan-Wook

The Woman in Black

As the first film to be released by the British horror-film-specialist production company Hammer Film Productions since their recent resurrection, and as Daniel Radcliffe's first post-Potter movie, James Watkins' new horror The Woman in Black, an adaptation of Susan Hill's acclaimed ghost story, marks a new beginning in multiple senses. But does it show promise for the futures of both Hammer and Radcliffe?

The very first scene, where three children playing with their toy dolls suddenly stop as if in a trance before throwing themselves out of a window, certainly suggests that Hammer's return is something to get excited about. The scene is both chilling and artistically shot, especially the opening close-up of a toy tea-pot pouring imaginary water at the children's make-believe tea party, an image that early on establishes the eerie motif of ghosts. The toy dolls too are effectively creepy, and reappear throughout the film as ghostly presences that give the illusion that the characters are being watched and their movements followed all the time.

The film never quite matches these early high expectations, but it still makes for an effective horror. The plot follows a mourning and financially struggling young lawyer named Arthur Kibbs (Daniel Radcliffe), who having been assigned the task of travelling to a remote estate in the English countryside begins to see frightening visions of a spooky woman dressed in a black mourning gown. Setting out to be a straightforward horror The Woman in Black needs to have enough scares and jumps to satisfy horror enthusiasts, and there are plenty of such unsettling scenes. The Woman in Black of the title makes for an effectively scary figure, expressing plenty of rage and insanity in brief close-ups, such as when she appears as a reflection next to Arthur's face in the mirror. Director Watkins also makes clever use of objects for scares, like a violently swinging rocking chair and the aforementioned dolls.

With all the focus on scares and jumps, the characters in the film are somewhat undeveloped and the plot a little thin. Characters like the landowner Sam Daily (Ciarán Hinds), his wife (Janet McTeer) and even the Woman in Black herself (Liz White) are all well acted, but neither given important roles nor much biography. Mrs Daily in particular is underused, as she puts in a briefly captivating performance as a mourning mother who fills the lonely void left by her dead children with a pair of small dogs, and who frighteningly lapses into seemingly-possessed trances in which she carves disturbing images into wood; but we only see her in a few scenes. To be fair the film prioritizes spooks over these other elements of characterization, but more development would have made for a more complex film.

Daniel Radcliffe is however given lots to do as the protagonist of the film, but isn't entirely convincing. He fails to express the wide variations of emotions, which shifts between loss, grief and fear, which his character experiences during the film. As the character we are left alone with in the haunted house a better performance was needed to adequately hammer home the scares. Admittedly the script does not give him much dialogue to work with and perhaps didn't give the young actor much opportunity to express himself, but we are never convinced of his grief or fear. The haunted house itself, though a little clichéd as an eerie isolated estate full of props like creepy dolls and dim candlelight, is a well crafted location, and thanks to impressive shots of the marshland and scenes filmed on location we really get a feel for the grey remoteness of the British countryside.

Though there are better and scarier films that deal with similar issues, such as the Spanish-Mexican horror The Orphanage, director James Watkins certainly deserves plaudits for the admirable intention of making a horror film that chooses to scare through implication and the imagination rather than lazily using gore and vulgarity, making The Woman in Black a welcome addition to the horror oeuvre. We hope for a future of similarly natured horror movies.

Romantics Anonymous

Usually when you think of French romance films, what springs to mind is confident, sexy lovers speaking wittily to each other in a far too open manner, as well as annoying perfume adverts. Not, however, new French comedy Romantics Anonymous, which has as its protagonists two painfully shy characters who can barely string two words together to each other.

Angélique (Isabelle Carré), who's name appropriately translates as 'angelic', is a talented chocolatier who is too shy to make her ability public (which according to director Jean-Pierre Améris is a problem he too has suffered from). She is hired by chocolate shop opener Jean René (played by Belgian Benoît Poelvoorde) who too suffers from crippling shyness, and admits to his therapist that he is terrified of women and intimacy. As one would expect from a romantic comedy, they soon fall for each other, but their mutual shyness makes it comically difficult for them to get together, most memorably in a restaurant date in which the pair panic, sweat, and stumble their way through awkward conversation until Jean René flees out of the bathroom window.

With its too unconventually timid protagnoists Romantic Anonymous is certainly a new take on the romantic comedy genre, but it is still at escence a romance film. The beautiful style of colours, scenery and music confrim this, as well as the will-they-wont-they plot. Poelvoorde and Carré succeed too in making their characters vulnerable and engaging, and there are several laugh out loud moments.

Both characters' fears seem to relate to their parents. We learn early on that Jean René’s dad was scared of everything, with a motto of "Let’s hope nothing bad happens" that Jean René seems to have inherited when he nearly blows it with Angélique by telling himself that in pursuing her he would end up heartbroken. As for Angélique, she doesn’t seem to have had a mother figure, for her mum is shown acting immaturely and sleeping with strangers. She is therefore left to take care and mother herself, as is apparent in the scenes in which she calms herself down by singing to herself, just as a mother would. In this sense Romantics Anonymous is a lot like the fairytales Tom Thumb and Hansel & Gretel in its theme of the process of growing up. Through tasks set by his therapist, such as to touch someone (which brings about an awkwardly hilarious scene of Jean René nervously prowling round his office on the lookout for someone), Jean René takes steps to leave his comfort zone and battle his fears, while Angélique faces her problems with the help of the Romantics Anonymous therapy group of the title.

Another prominent feature of the film is chocolate (so much so that free chocolate was handed out before the screening!). Angélique and Jean René are both lucky to have a passion for chocolate, as both use it as an outlet for the emotions of love they feel towards life and towards each other. The chocolatier Angélique channels her love into her creations, and her passion for chocolate is evident in the way she articulately and enthusiastically talks about its complexities and varieties. Jean René meanwhile, in one effectively realized scene, is left alone with Angélique expressing in detail his love for the chocolate she has just made, only to realize that his words are inadvertedly directed towards her too, causing him to again panic and run away. The couple may have created a little bubble for themselves that separates them from the world, but chocolate is the bridge between their two worlds that allows them to bond.