Book Report: Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (2005)

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Book Report: Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (2005)

(spoilers ahead)

Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go is a tricky novel. It seems almost innocent in describing the lives of its three main characters which live an uneventful life in a boarding school and how they grow up. But beneath that unexciting surface lurks a dark story about rearing children in ignorance, teaching them to pretend and making them believe in authority at all times. Yes, the book also deals with cloning and what makes us human, but this has been dealt with in enough other books and movies. What fascinates me about that book is the way it portrays education and society but also the way it incorporates the three things I tell my students too often about: ignorance, authority and pretense. I just finished reading the book in my main class and was happy to see it was received (mostly) well, because I wasn’t sure students would find it appealing. But now I know that I would read it again and while working on it, I was surprised how much the novel has to offer and how thought-provoking it is. It has a lot of aspects to discuss and I want to try to get at most of what I deem important, which will still be a lot. For structure’s sake, I will follow the three-part division of the book.

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District 9 (2009)

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District 9 (2009)

District 9 disappointed me more than I expected. I had heard so many good things about it, it garnered really surprising Oscar nominations and seemed thematically to be right up my alley. And I felt most of that in the first 30 minutes or so and then suddenly everything disappeared and I was watching a decent body horror movie followed by a decent sci-fi-action movie that didn’t have that much to say anymore. The movie felt unsure about itself after that turning point since it had worked well as a mockumentary and continued that style although the content didn’t fit anymore. Director Neill Blomkamp has a good idea on its hand but lets it slip through.

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Bloodthirsty Kids

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Bloodthirsty Kids

It’s been a while since I read an interview with Alan Moore (Watchmen, V for Vendetta), one of the best and most influential comics writer ever, who is known for having “extreme” opinions and for favoring anarchism. This interview was published in 1987 and is very long and very interesting. What I want to look at is something he said that keeps coming back to me ever since then:

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Prometheus (2012)

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Prometheus (2012)

Prometheus seems to be one of the most discussed movies of the last couple of years. You find an endless amount of posts about its general meaning, the ending, individual scenes or just lines. I find it fascinating that a movie can have such a strong reaction that is not simply love or hate but thought. People think about this movie to figure it out and even people who don’t like it mostly do because of unanswered questions that bother them. How often does a movie get that kind of feedback, especially one that cost more than $100 million? It is a rare example of a movie full of ideas (even if the execution is not perfect).

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Comics Are For Everyone - DMZ: No Future

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Comics Are For Everyone - DMZ: No Future

Tying in to yesterday’s post about Four Lions, I thought this is a good time to write about something that I also care about a lot but haven’t mentioned yet, which is comics. In fact, since I started again trying to watch every movie ever produced, my comic reading has been strongly reduced. Anyway, I recently read another volume of DMZ, the post-9/11 analogy by Brian Wood and I liked it a lot and thought it was worth writing about.

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Four Lions (2010)

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Four Lions (2010)

(some minor spoilers ahead)

Four Lions is a movie that you wouldn’t think exists. It’s brilliant in many ways but it is an unlikely success. The story of five suicide bombers as a comedy could have gone in many wrong directions but Christopher Morris directs this movie so skilfully and determinedly that there never is a wrong beat. The acting is wonderful, the documentary style works and above all the movie is extremely funny. I was laughing out loud several times and that doesn’t happen very often. What a little amazing clever and utterly uncompromising movie this is.

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Remember Me (2010)

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Remember Me (2010)

Remember Me is a movie I did not expect to like based on my assumptions. But it surprised me even if there were many things I didn’t actually like. What’s great in the movie are the performances (especially Robert Pattinson, Emilie de Ravin, Ruby Jerin and most of all Pierce Brosnan), the characters and their relationships and… well, that’s it. The problem is that the plot is too constructed, one character is annoying as hell (Tate Ellington as the roommate Aidan) and the first and last ten minutes feel very contrived and unnecessary.

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Did I Like This? (The South Park Psycho)

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Did I Like This? (The South Park Psycho)

Because I enjoyed my first re-listening to 90s hip-hop so much, I dove a bit more into it and realized two things: 1) I know a lot of albums from 1990 to 1992, but almost nothing from 1993, making a radical change in course for my music taste (and for the worse since it was time for Eurodance), which also means I listened to all of that rap music between the ages of 10 to 12. That amazes me and will continue to do so when I listen to more albums. 2) I know a lot of albums from that period. And this was the beginning of the 90s without the internet. I didn’t even have a lot of money, so I have no idea how I got all that music. I had a good friend with similar tastes but that doesn't explain where all the music came from.

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This 60s Movie: Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

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This 60s Movie: Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

(some spoilers ahead, but nothing major)

Lawrence of Arabia came up as another random 60s movie and of course it’s also one the big classics that I had not seen yet. I know many old movies but still admit that I can get impatient quickly because, well, they’re old and often slow. And I grew impatient in the first 30-50 minutes because I found it slow and the movie is three hours long, so I was scared! But somehow the movie managed to turn around for me and got me more than I expected. It’s a weird movie or maybe just a weird main character but still an intriguing one. Peter O’Toole is great and I was really impressed with the set design and camera work. You have to be impressed seeing all those amazing shots, towns and masses of people and realizing this was long before the convenience of CGI. I think, it’s worth for these moments alone. The work that director David Lean has put into the movie is very visible. It is a good movie if you have the patience. I didn’t really get much of a 60s vibe from the movie, though. Maybe it’s a bit darker than I expected, especially the second half went down some surprising roads, but I didn’t see too much of the typical zeitgeist. Then again, the movie and O’Toole didn’t shy away from portraying Lawrence as clearly homosexual (Lean thought he was although experts say it’s not clear).

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Power Reversal (II)

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Power Reversal (II)

I tried my experiment again recently. Two different students tried to be teacher for a whole lesson. They are generally good students, they had a plan and motivation, so what could go wrong? Yes, everything! At the end of the lesson, they felt depressed, angry and frustrated. They did not understand what had happened. No one was listening to them. They lost control quickly. Their plan didn’t turn out as they thought.On the other hand, I made some observations myself while sitting in the last row with the other students. I was shocked at several things. How I didn’t hear anything anyone else said when they participated and how little anyone cared. How quickly I fell back into the role of a student, talking to others, looking at the clock repeatedly, waiting for the lesson to end. How other students completely went nuts, running around in class, throwing stuff, insulting the teachers, although I saw everything.

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This 80s Movie: WarGames (1983)

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This 80s Movie: WarGames (1983)

After my 70s movie didn’t give me anything I wanted to write about (Mean Streets), I got to an 80s movie. I find it much easier to talk about the 60s and 70s, for one thing because they seem more special to me, but also because I find it harder to grasp the 80s, to get a feel for them. Maybe also because I was born in 1980 and it’s harder to view a decade if you’ve actually been there. Distance certainly helps. Anyway, the 80s to me are somewhat the antithesis of the 60s and 70s, which were a time where real change was possible, while the 80s felt like taking two steps back. But instead of the conservatism of the 50s, the 80s were governed by extreme capitalism and a superficiality that is often mocked but still true. Even if it’s an overgeneralization (as it must be if you try to summarize 10 years in history in a few keywords), there’s a reason why MTV, hairstyles and silly pop music are representative for this era.

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Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)

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Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest is not a great movie but has some entertaining bits. But it’s also very long and at stretches boring, especially since it rehashes so many elements of the first movie which gets tired fast, including Jack Sparrow. Which is surprising since his character basically carried the first movie. I was also frustrated with the depiction of the Keira Knightley character who is supposed to have grown tough but a for a long scene just acts like a pouty girl while the men are fighting.That was annoying. On the other hand, I loved the design of Davey Jones and his crew so much that it almost saved the rest of the movie for me. No, to be clear, these characters are so well designed, produced and played that it’s worth seeing the movie for. The rest, not so much, since it’s mostly action set pieces that feel like action set pieces.

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Did I Like This? (Banned in the U.S.A.)

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Did I Like This? (Banned in the U.S.A.)

What many don’t know about me is my hip-hop past. When you are very young, you don’t listen to music consciously until at one point you hear something that grabs you. For me, that was hip-hop, or rap as it was mostly called back then. I must have been around 10 or 11 when I got introduced to that kind of music and something spoke to me about it. I mainly started with Public Enemy, one of the most political bands of the last century, so I like to believe that this aspect made it appealing to me. But I was very young, so who knows. Anyway, although my musical tastes changed several times over the years, I always fondly remember hip-hop music and come back to it from time to time. I then also like to believe that the genre has changed for the worse and that (as the cliché goes) everything was better in the past (which normally isn't true). But then again, Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is one of my favourite albums of the last couple of years.

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12 Years a Slave (2013)

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12 Years a Slave (2013)

(spoilers ahead, even if the movie only has few surprises, since the title tells you most of it, but I will discuss almost every scene of it)

12 Years a Slave is an extremely powerful movie. It doesn’t let you off the hook in showing you what slavery was like. And you have to keep in mind that the protagonist, Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) was probably better off than the average slave. He had some opportunities because of his education and he didn’t die as a slave. But despite that relatively narrow focus, the movie manages to give a realistic portrayal of slavery. I found the film very impressive, especially the way it was directed by Steve McQueen. I had seen Shame and was impressed by it too but I didn’t feel an emotional connection to it. 12 Years a Slave goes straight to the heart by its sheer force of filmmaking and I appreciate that a lot. Every aspect of the movie – the acting, the music, the script, the cinematography, the editing, the production and costume design, the sound design – is not just a showcase for talent but actually increases the emotional impact of the movie.

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Soccer Punch

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Soccer Punch

So, about soccer. I’ve never been a big soccer fan. As I said before, I watched the World Cup of 1990 and I loved it. But I was 10 then and easier to impress. I watched most of the major cups every two years but that’s about it. I often don’t know most players’ names, I don’t read or watch any after-game evaluation or pre-game analysis and I don’t collect sticker albums. I find it entertaining to watch, mostly in the background while I’m working, not more or less than a good TV series.

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Miami Vice (2006)

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Miami Vice (2006)

(spoilers ahead!)

There is not that much to say about Miami Vice as a movie except that I found it pretty disappointing. I’m confused by the critical acclaim it got but then again, it seems like a movie that is more or less forgotten by now and that I understand. It’s a bit of a mess, a plot that’s hard to understand but in which also nothing really happens most of the time. The movie on the one hand appears so gritty and realistic but then on the other hand relies on big romantic love and sex scenes that totally feel out of place. I didn’t feel a lot for the characters either. I like both Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx but they were so damn serious all the time that I found it hard to care about them. And why is Justin Theroux in this movie? He has about two lines of dialogue and his face is obscured most of the time. He could have been an extra and it wouldn’t have made a difference. The whole opening sequence was great, though, it felt like the movie was trying something different, there was an interesting mood going on and John Hawkes is just brilliant. But after his death (so after about 15 minutes) the movie quickly deteriorated into long talks between people who didn’t trust each other, dance scenes, racing boat scenes, container boat scenes, plane scenes and a confusing shoot-out finale. And one of the most pointless final shots I can remember. It’s hard not to compare this to Michael Mann’s Heat and not feel sad. (This article seems to explain why the movie is such a mess.)

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