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More from Bifrost. Bifrost, Manitoba.
Or, the "rainbow bridge connecting heaven and earth” -- Odin's realm of Asgard, and as I wrote, the everyday people place called Midgard -- otherwise known as Earth. Oh, small towns in Canada...
Heaven, earth, house and Air..."Dark Messages."
View the entire slide show of the Old Odin House here. Photos by Guy Maddin.
A repost. Because I miss my sisters...
In real life, memories don’t follow the patterns of a typical movie. Recollections are not played out in fully developed narrative timeframes, perfectly balanced and structured strands of thought, or tangible, easily understood events. Memories can be visited but never wholly embraced. They can be strong and unforgettable, but bit by bit, they lose their edges, making them, for many, even more melancholic. The more they elude us, the less simplistic they become -- never just happy or sad, but mysterious and bittersweet, replete with or bereft of emotion for reasons often beyond comprehension.
Sofia Coppola's poetic, tragic and mysterious The Virgin Suicides (released nearly ten years ago and, which emerged to me today, a memory itself while thinking of my siblings), captures the ambiguity of such hazy recollections with tender, albeit horrifying ennui.
Adapted from the novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, Coppola's picture doesn't tell a story; instead, it leaves a swoony, foggy impression, a darkly beautiful intangibility filled with almost torturously elusive feeling. Set in Michigan in the early 70s, the film is marked immediately with the pall of death and the dangling unknown of why it happened. The five teenage Lisbon sisters -- all blonde and beautiful -- kill themselves, and a group of smitten teenage boys struggle to understand why. The suicides are a defining period in these boys' lives, but even as they narrate the film, they have never gotten their heads around the loss. In an unusual narrative and cinematic point of view, the boys wistfully re-create the girls' lives through a swiped diary, bits of bric-a-brac memorabilia and remembrances of voyeurism, idealism and fleeting carnality. Never really understanding these girls as living, breathing flesh, their communication acts much like modern ways of "connecting" -- through the computer, through online social networking, through pictures, through texts. Just as now, interacting with the real person as opposed to an idealized representation is usually much messier, much more real and much scarier.
Which connects to the death of 13-year-old sister Cecilia (Hanna Hall). The suicide places sisters Lux (Kirsten Dunst), Bonnie (Chelse Swain), Mary (A.J. Cook) and Therese (Leslie Hayman) into a mourning period marked not by obvious wailing drama, but by a peculiar inwardness that only sisters can understand. When one feels alienated by their parents, the bonding of siblings is frequently strong -- so intense that secret languages and, in the case with my sisters, coded words and private hand signals, are created to invent one's own world. These are the people who understand you. But blood bonds can be frightfully concentrated, and in the worst cases, veer into madness.
So when a psychiatrist tells the grieving parents (Kathleen Turner and James Woods) that the girls need more social contact, they allow the sexually curious Lux (with sisters and their assigned dates in tow) to attend a homecoming dance with heartthrob Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnett). After an innocent, oddly heartbreaking transgression occurs, the strict Roman Catholic family (led mostly by Mom) cloisters the girls in the house, taking them out of school and depriving them of all social contact. Of course, this can't come without consequences. The girls will grow ever closer, ever secretive, and ever destructive.
But Coppola doesn't place those consequences within a moral straitjacket -- no one is demonized, and no one is entirely understood. Many criticized the picture for its lack of fully developed characters, but that is exactly the point. Who are these girls? These girls are memories, these girls are tragic beauties put on pedestals. These girls are characters one writes books about, but one never truly knows. And the not knowing is part of the tragedy (does anyone really want to know them? Or do they want to keep them? Or stare at them? Or, after a night of passion, leave them waking up alone and cold in a football field?). And then these are girls, who committed, really, in the plain light of day, an ugly act that turned their young, lilting beauty and promise of a full life into rotting corpses. Death. Teen death. A stepbrother's urn my hard-hearted, but privately heartbroken and morbidly curious stepsister opened after a game of Scrabble.
The Virgin Suicides is shot with a gauzy, haloed beauty that is obsessive but never perverse (and the haunting music by Air is especially poignant and otherworldly). The point is to capture an adolescence lost, both to the sisters and to the boys themselves. Coppola's intelligence, sensitivity and ethereal style avoids obvious irony and easy interpretation, which can be maddening -- but then suicide is maddening, both for those who achieve the act and those who suffer the aftermath. Coppola's vision of this uptight suburbia is made both erotic and exotic by these fairy-tale Rapunzels who live there -- troubled, creative and intriguing girls trapped in the unfathomable and misty glaze of worship and memories.
Though August in L.A., it's Autumn in...Manitoba, or so it feels that way. Perfect for a drive to the perfectly named rural municipality of Bifrost only to stumble across a perfectly derelict house, perfectly sinking in the middle of, seemingly, nowhere.
But the abandoned Bifrost abode residing in the Interlake Region of Manitoba, Canada -- a municipality on the west shore of Lake Winnipeg -- comes with Scandinavian baggage -- specifically from Norse mythology. Bifröst means “rainbow bridge connecting heaven and earth” (that's Odin's realm of Asgard, and the everyday people place called Midgard or, Earth).
And I assumed Bifrost simply meant...double cold. Instead it's something more exalted, Valhalla by way of the temporal world. Seems a rather heavy load for this home to carry. No wonder its foundation and spirits are quite literally, sagging.
Click on lower right, or here for full slide show. Separate shots here. Photos by Guy Maddin.
With madness on the mind, and a stay in Gimli, Manitoba where I'm happily, though perhaps crazily conducting research, and my constant urgings for viewers to watch this documentary, I'm returning to the movie Asylum. Please watch. And read.
"David...will you please stop talking. Please David. Please be quiet David..."
These are the urgings of beautiful, disturbed Julia, one inmate or rather, tenant in Peter Robinson's 1972 documentary Asylum -- a movie that should be re-discovered as one the greats of documentary filmmaking. A superlative example of late 60s, 1970s cinema verite, direct-cinema, Robinson's picture shares much in common with The Maysles Brother's Grey Gardens, Frederick Wiseman's High School and Errol Morris' Vernon, Florida. Without standard voice-over narration and nary an introductory statement (there is short scroll at picture start) the filmmaker shunts us into this world -- one that's frequently funny, terribly sad and continually fascinating. Once you settle into the place, you don't want the movie to end. After recently receiving a lovely, heartfelt email and later phone discussion from the film's cameraman/editor and in effect co-director, Richard Adams, and director Robinson's wonderful son, Kenneth I wanted to watch the picture, yet again, and run (now) an even longer piece on this fascinating document every cinephile must watch.
The picture begins with R.D. Laing, the controversial Scottish psychiatrist who, in the '60s started the anti-psychiatry movement, an idea based on the theory that insanity was less disease and more social construction. Instead of placing the mentally ill (largely schizophrenics) in white-walled, overly-medicated hospitals, Laing's "patients" lived communally in "safe houses" where they had free reign to subsist as they please. Laing believed that autonomy and understanding were necessary to aid mental health and that self reliance would make a person stronger and a successful part of the community. To Laing, there's no reason these people must be outcasts.
Robinson's study consisted of a seven week stay in 1971 at the Archway Community safe house in London, a row house on a residential East End street that harbors a dog, a cat, a bird, and a bunch of schizophrenics. But of course, the patients (some looking like modern day hipsters) are more than their disease as the film so starkly and often, eloquently reveals. We see them discuss feelings of terror in a very rational manner or ramble on conspiracy-theory-like about computers and various notions that range from gibberish to somewhat profound declarations. We see patients comfort each other with words like "don't listen to them, they're only voices" to rubbing heads together in physical bonds of empathy. We also see them ignore one another, cry out and fight -- and by film end, fight a lot -- particularly with one inmate -- David, who becomes such a nuisance to the others that they engage in serious discussion to eject him.
David -- a handsome, startlingly blue-eyed man in his 40's or early 50's, talks with an almost Richard Burton lilt -- but blathers incessantly and demands attention wearing dramatic scarves and, in one scene, a string of woman's beads. He's as mad as a hatter, but you also get the sense that he knows partially, some of the trouble he's starting and is remaining obstinate to change (which isn't so crazy when you think of people in the "sane" world). Nevertheless, he hits people, screams, scares Julia -- an angel faced girl who bears an uncanny resemblance to Gwyneth Paltrow (only lovelier) -- and continually utters “People in glass houses should not throw stones!”
As we see in drama worthy of Shakespeare's crazy/lovely Ophelia, mental illness is certainly not reserved for the ugly. Julia (as well as a few other women in the house) looks more like a Roman Polanski heroine, crawling about a la Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion, a blonde beauty quaking with fear but giving in to the sporadic joke. As she rocks back and forth with internal horror and eventually reverts to an infantile state, we later learn that she believes she had let off the atom bomb and "made the air bad." Her family takes her out of the house for a spell (they are distrustful of the experiment) but return the beauty when others beckon her back. She sits in bed and tells the filmmakers of the stay, showing them a hair tie, and how her family wanted her to look pretty and presentable. You can only imagine what Julia's parents think when they behold their beautiful daughter lost in a maze of madness.
But I couldn't help but think that had Julia discovered some Swinging London or New York scene or kept the company of an Edie Sedgwick, she might not have seemed so nuts. You get the feeling Syd Barrett could have walked into the place (she does talk delicately of having a guitar and singing) and swept her out of there (I want to see Julia, like Emily, play). But then I remember how Edie and Syd ended up. But then, for their short brilliant, trailblazing moments, they lived. And created. Is Julia better off? Is she really experiencing life? A life that might become "normal?" And should she ever even have to live a "normal" life? Why should she? Since we tend to mythologize crazy people, especially from the late 60s early 70s counter-culture, it's a good question.
But looking at our current overly medicated society, in which people pop Prozac and Lexapro and Wellbutrin or whatever is readily available instead of simply enduring some hardship and perhaps, learning from them, or even fueling creativity from it, I champion these people. These people endure real mental illness. Mental illness is hard. And it's tough, if not impossible to find your way out of that Shining-esque topiary maze. But that beautifully scary place can often provide insight. And maybe you need a human hand, even a "crazy" hand, to guide you through, at least some kind of understanding -- or remain lost forever.
Which leads me to another compelling, heartbreaking moment -- when a young tenant's father arrives to fetch him for indefinite time away. Talking to the film's resident therapist and rent collector, he admits to hiring his son a girlfriend (not a very pretty one, he points out) with the hope that she'll give him the extra confidence to "hold his chin up" and feel like a man. Fearing his son will go the other way without some female companionship and clearly, failing to understand the depth of his son's problems, we watch the suited-up son leave after he's shyly informed others his desire to stay. He's too afraid to tell his father.
Watching the personalities emerge as they work chores, prepare food or...write on the walls creates the film's "characters" within its loose structure. Omitting any opinion concerning Laing's procedures, the film demands that you study it yourself, deciding if you think this kind of living is actually helping these people.
With my modern entertainment mind thinking toward banal to addictive Reality TV, I couldn't help but consider how much more interesting these people were than the generic faced dolts on shows like Big Brother or the sad exploited celebs being exploited (and exploiting themselves) on shows like Sober House (Tom Sizemore could not face off with with David -- and I mean that as a compliment to David), and wished the picture were an actual series. As the people of Archway are "crazy" they are not constantly acting up to the camera and often appear oblivious to the two-man crew. If focused on, they appear to be talking as they probably always do and often give the impression of bemusement. With that, there’s never a feeling of exploitation -- if they don’t want to talk to the cameras, they simply walk on by. They're not seeking their 15 minutes. You certainly won’t see that on Reality TV.
And sticking in the thoughts of Reality television, there's even a Survivor-like moment when the group has a meeting to, essentially, vote David off. But unlike the tricks of television, there’s no closure and David stays (maybe) with an end discussion of his past jobs in computers and the military. Speaking, for once, in a lucid manner, you'll mull over the truth of his statements and, suddenly he doesn’t seem so crazy anymore. In fact, after this mind expanding experience, the world seems crazy and sane all at once.
An important, affecting and masterful document, Asylum is a re-discovered treasure that demands viewing. Direct and powerful yet obtuse and mystifying, the film and its people remain etched in your mind. You’ll watch them again, hoping to glean more and only to become frustrated when you cannot. Fittingly, the film’s so good that it becomes...maddening.
And once more with the brilliant Mr. Barrett:
Ike and Tina Turner and Phil Spector make me wonder...who is ever in control? Of anything? And who wants to be? Oh sweet mystery of life at last I've not found you.
"River Deep Mountain High," and in particular, through this enigmatic clip, shines a noirish spotlight on those mysteries that make life and most especially, love, so beautiful, frustrating, compelling, magical, dysfunctional, painful and crazy. And love should be a little crazy. And it is painful. If anyone understands that, it is the brilliant Ike and Tina Turner. And Phil Spector.
But who shot this? I'm imagining a little boy Guy Maddin who just happened across Ike, Tina and the Ikettes performing on some Winnipeg subway platform (if there is such a thing there), while beating the freezing cold on his way home from school. I wonder, did he have a puppy, that always followed him around?
My god, this is so powerful it makes my heart hurt. And yearn. And as John Donne wrote, "break, blow, burn." One should feel like this, even if it leads to ruin -- at least once in life.
It was May, before she went to Cannes, before she lost her passport, before she went all Eleanor Parker and was shut in the slammer. Of course, her incarceration wasn't as bad as Caged. But it certainly wasn't any fun for the freckled one.
In a dumpy Burbank motel, the woman I've defended too many times to count, a woman who's endured more than her share of gossip, family drama, personal demons and quite literally, mean girls, sat down with me to discuss her role in the upcoming movie Inferno: A Linda Lovelace Story.
Of course I'm talking about Lindsay Lohan, a talented actress I root for, and an actress who should be judged for that -- her acting. I don't care what so-and-so movie writer from whatever newspaper or Web site feels about Lindsay's partying or sexy lifestyle (there's a strong strain of misogyny in this kind of critique), the real question is, can she act? And if so-and-so movie critic doesn't think she can act, then I can only wonder whether he or she is judging the actress for her off-screen behavior. That's a shame. If critics assessed Jack Nicholson for his off-screen behavior, he might not have the Oscars he so richly deserves. And I won't get started on legends like Warren Beatty, Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole and the late, great Oliver Reed. And then there's younger names, like...Colin Farrell.
I revere these men for their work and for their legend. But these are movie stars. Take off your sanctimonious, hypocritical Hedda Hopper hats for a moment and think about it -- since when are movie stars role models? How boring Hollywood would be if stars had absolutely no scandal in their lives. How boring life would be if anyone didn't dip into a pool of scandal every once in a while. God bless you sinners! Lindsay's antics aren't anything new -- actors have often been wild, especially young ones. "It" girl Clara Bow (whom Lindsay adores), was for a time, shunned from "decent" Hollywood society because of her supposedly "crazy" behavior. Still, she didn't have TMZ filming her every move.
And with Lindsay on board, even in the middle of the night No-Tel, Motel, paparazzi showed up -- in the Parking Lot. We were all amused by their desperation. And Lindsay handled it in stride. She's used to it. Thoughtful, funny and good, Lohan depicted her shoot, which were essentially, stills from the movie (written and to be directed by Matthew Wilder), with impressive, shifting emotions, gritty strength and intense poignancy. As photographer Tyler Shields snapped the dramatic pictures, based on an especially sad moment in Lovelace's life, it was fascinating to watch her go in and out of character.
When it was all done, Lindsay sat on the bed with me while I asked questions (and here, simply listened, like a therapist), and she talked quite easily about the sadomasochist relationship of Lovelace and Chuck Traynor, at one point saying the script reminded her of her parents. Yes. She has been through some things.
Oh, Frances Farmer. She died 40 years ago today and for those of us who love cinema, the power of performance and brave, talented, intelligent "bad girls" who do not go gentle into that good night -- we should feel a pang of sadness. And frustration. Deep frustration. And we should be frustrated by the movie version of her life -- Frances. Based on how many times I've watched the picture, I'm beginning to believe I harbor some kind of frustration fetish. I've viewed the movie more than necessary, in spite of its flaws and, finally had to concede that, even with Jessica Lange's genius, kick-out-the-jams-motherfuckers performance, the movie is not going to change through time. I'm never going to be happy with how it fully depicts Frances Farmer, I'm never going to accept its romantic side story, and I'm never going to know the truth anyway (whatever that is), so why be frustrated? See, the frustration turns into questioning frustration. Which is...frustrating.
But my god, how I love when Jessica Lange loses her composure and understandably smacks that bitchy hairdresser ('Your hair's so thin, you're gonna lose it if you're not careful.") in the face. And the intense power and pain I feel when she screams "You got no fucking right!" as the police break into her room, wake her up naked, and drag her out of the Knickerbocker Hotel. That hotel isn't far from my apartment and every time I pass by, I not only think of Frances, but of Jessica spitting out her rightful invective. That moment comes to me with such immediacy that I've uttered "You got no fucking right!" spontaneously, perhaps disturbingly, under my breath. But this is my instinctive duty as a fellow native Seattleite. For some of us hailing from the soggy, boggy PNW, Frances is our girl, and not just our original riot girl who will one day get her revenge (god bless you Kurt Cobain), but our patron saint of "don't fuck with me fellas!" -- and the tragic aftermath that kind of behavior creates. Alas, no Pepsi for her.
And Jessica Lange gets this. Her ferocious, fearless beauty saved what could have been yet another studio mangling of the life and legend of a notorious woman. Miss Lange reminds viewers that once upon a time there was this actress named Frances Farmer, a gifted but troubled actress from the 1930s who was not just crazy, but superb. And was she even crazy? Certainly no more, and probably a lot less, than many a young, intelligent woman struggling in the often alienating business of show. Frances Farmer had a soul, natural born talent, a real, thinking, searching brain, an outspoken temper, inner demons and pure beauty. You're not allowed to have all of those things at once.
And these elements are presented, though not as skillfully or as layered as they should have been. A chance to really tell her story, a tale straight from Nathaniel West or Horace McCoy, was clearly at hand when the film was conceived (read Farmer's autobiography "Will There Really Be a Morning?"-- never mind its questionable veracity, read it -- and you can see why), but through script problems, studio requests, and one strange association with the conspiracy-obsessed ex-convict and probable liar Stewart Jacobson (played in the film as "Harry York" by Sam Shepard), Frances veers into fantasy -- a fantasy Frances Farmer would not have appreciated.
Many fine films based on real lives or events stray from facts, add characters, or reinvent history (JFK and Nixon are supreme examples. Inglourious Basterds, brilliantly creates its own insane, inspired, collage mixed tape), but that's not what makes Frances suffer. It's more that the movie, though lovely period detail and certainly good, isn't entirely focused, and so never creates a strong case about just why Farmer had to endure such torment -- Harry York is an easy character to throw in. And as harrowing as many scenes play out, it also soft-pedals the core story -- about one woman's fight against both the indignities of Hollywood and the abuse of the mental profession. What happened to Frances Farmer is an abomination, and not because we'd never see her again shine as an actress but because her life was perversely and hideously stolen from her.
But in the hands of Lange, Frances is thoroughly watchable even when becoming an almost traumatizing experience. Lange not only looks like Farmer, but also embodies everything we've ever read about the talented star: The understandable drinking (who didn't tear it up in Hollywood?), the rage (how many stars were under studio control? Farmer was just too strong-willed to take it), and the desperation to find freedom. But the powers that be -- Mother, Hollywood, and the Mental Institution -- helped keep this intelligent woman from getting healthy and furthering her art -- and she had so much to give. Though much of Frances Farmer's biography is speculative (including the book "Shadowland"), I'm not with those who believe she deserved to be incarcerated. She was a drunk, she was hard to work with, she was, to some, really crazy. So what? Some even think her stay in the mental ward has been over-dramatized. I'm not certain. My unique, beautiful great-grandmother was sent to the literal Cuckoo's Nest (the State Institution in Salem, Oregon) as a young woman, and she died there. She should have never been in that awful, stinking, soul sucking place. Even sadder, she was stuck in that snake pit for so long, that when anyone realized she was fine to leave, she chose to stay. The past was over and she knew no other life.
These things happen to "different" women. And like the young ones who exhibit their so-called "eccentric" free-thinking thoughts, Frances would both be ostracized and praised for her precociousness. The picture begins in 1931 when a 16-year-old Farmer writes a high school essay entitled "God Dies" (At 16? In 1931? How fucking great is that?). This is just the first of many cases where she enrages Seattle's moral majority, who later branded her a communist (her trip to Russia doesn't help). A talented stage actress in college, Farmer lands in Hollywood, where she declares "I'm not a glamour girl." Nevertheless, she marries a young actor and makes movies (mostly to her chagrin), including Howard Hawks' Come and Get It (a film she was proud of, despite what this movie wants us to believe).
Lange carries us through this hell with brilliance, but Frances decides to shift the focus of the relationship with Farmer's deranged mother (perfectly played by Kim Stanley) to the more romantic overtures of Harry York. Lange and Shepard have wonderful chemistry, and he's charming, but the poetic license here bothers me. According to the film, York tried to reach out to Farmer after her inconceivably unfair and colorful court appearance (well-documented in Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon in which we learn Farmer wrote her profession down as "cocksucker" -- thankfully we see that in the movie as well).
Nice thought, but I'd rather see the entire courtroom dramas played out in their ball-busting, gory detail. Frances kicking and screaming in her sensible, disheveled suit is as iconic to me as Marilyn Monroe standing on the subway grate in The Seven Year Itch. The hair, the cigarette, the smirk -- this is some woman, goddammit. I want more of her. Not some guy attempting to save the damsel in distress. But according to Frances, York was responsible for Farmer's first escape from the sanitarium and the reason she was presentable for a hearing that excused from her first asylum (the film contends Harry sneaks into her ward and convinces a doctor to inject her with a drug that would make her more lucid). He also, allegedly, asked for her hand in marriage when she was under the legal guardianship of her mother, and he loved her until the end of her days.
Oh, life is but a dream but... bitch, please. I would burn down every rotten, abusive, mismanaged mental institution to bust Frances Farmer out of the loony bin. I understand the romantic impulse. But the idea that, despite everything written to the contrary -- Farmer may have had a chance at a decent life had she just ran away with this Prince Charming is an ill-conceived cinematic fantasy, and an insult to Farmer's memory.
It's the ultimate irony that the story of "the bad girl of West Seattle," the troubled non-conformist, the short lived Hollywood star who rarely censored her thoughts, was, even after death, under the control of a major studio who deemed her real life too depressing. As director Graeme Clifford states in the commentary on the DVD, you don't want to "nickel and dime the audience with facts." Pity. Farmer's "facts" were never boring. And the movie isn't either thanks to Miss Lange. Had she been given a little more control, or maybe had she been allowed to smack Stewart Jacobson in the mouth, hell even the hairdresser (without getting arrested) she could have directed this film -- she's the picture's real auteur. St. Frances would have approved.
He rightfully declared her imminent revenge on Seattle, but Kurt got Frances with this one too...
