I awoke this morning from some impossible cinematic dream. I was living in Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather Trilogy and some how I could sort of leap from one time frame to the next and this was contingent on trying to understand the narrative structure of the original novel and descerning how prose fiction structure is differnet (and more elastic in time and space) than the structure of cinema fiction. The key stone in the ablitity to arc around from DeNiro to Pacino to Branndo seemed to be about the difference of codex and scroll (a film being a large picture scroll up there in the dark black mystery of the projection booth)… There was this and my better half dragging me to Canada for some marathon road trip and all I wanted to do was go see the Max Ernst show at the Met.
“Can’t you just let me off at the Met,” I pleaded.
“No, we’re going to Canada and we only have 24 hours till Tuesday, when I have to be back. Climb in,” she said reving our Prius… (can you even rev a Prius?)
“But why? We’ll only be there for two hours and then have to turn around,” I pleaded and I never got a good answer: Shopping? Escaping a war? An endourance stunt? Trying to hear French?
I suppose a Coppola dream scape is the perfect dream day synthesis of the two films I saw yesterday: Revenge of the Sith at Zigfield and The Aviator on DVD. They are both, in some way, the bastard children of The Godfather. Certainly, the films abound with intertextuality and enjoying all those quotation marks, may be the only way to really enjoy either of them. But first the theater (as it is so rare for me to even go to a movie theater any more… so if you do, why not the Ziggy?):
It is fairly impossible to read this last Star Wars episode without thinking about our post 911 world… The landscapes read as some Future Manhattan and the Senate as some Future U.N… I kept wondering what they had to pay in rent for those double sunset views. It also begs the question, Is George Bush a Sith Lord? Where are the T-shirts to this effect? I’m going to try and make a photoshop image for the fun of it.
Scorsese’s Aviator also seems to explore the “dark side” of American genius and innovation. Under all the speed and sex and Hollywood tinsle, there is germs, and sickness, and obsessive craziness. It being Memorial Day, just reminds me that sometimes innocent kids get sent off to kill and be killed for a whole lot of speed and sex and germs and obsessive craziness… or some leaders are just evil… you decide.
On another level, it is fun to think about Disney and how both of these films, are more or less painting brought to life… I mean they are so many scenes shot on virtual stages with digi-backgrounds and synthetic flying machines and virtual actors. They are neither animations nor live action, they are a sythesis, like Willoughby, only much much much more expensive. It is an interesting world full of strange, germ carrying rodents… Mickey mouse and Darth Squirrel… Oh well, have a nice Memorial day and think about those who died (whatever you think of why).
