Gravity and the Journey to Birth

by Christopher Barr

Gravity was a film about resilience.  It was a film about living without all the hope and dreams that often fuel what we think it means to be alive.  This film sheds all the baggage and in some cases the language that we all feel defines and comforts our version of reality.

In spite of its technological complexity within the film, the film took the Ockham’s razor approach of a simple way is the best way.  Point A to point B to Point C, it also took that ‘it isn’t all about me approach’.  It was atavistic in its woman vs. nature point of view.  And what a point of view it was.

The Ryan Reynolds film Buried took a naturalistic approach that was mature and controlled.  Like Gravity, that film didn’t let the audience off the hook with flashbacks.  These films both kept you in the environment they started from and forced their respective audiences to stay there with them. 

Gravity was mesmerizing with its background Earth shots and its technology.  The footage of the ships and the ISS, International Space Station and the 360 camera angles put you as an audience member into that world like no other.  The only other film that comes to mind for me was Clint Eastwood’s Space Cowboys where the geriatric crew of that space shuttle had to stop a huge Russian satellite from reentering the Earth’s atmosphere.   I would also add Ron Howard’s best film to date, Apollo 13 for its realistic approach while in space.

Gravity went beyond any film on space travel when regarding realism.  What is it like to be alone, with your thoughts, with your memories, with your fears?  This film explored those philosophical questions throughout, where you have to take ownership of your actions, taking responsibility for your existence without a fanatical miracle story to follow.

Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours was a film about a young man that is caught between a rock and a hard place and can’t escape.  His right arm is wedged when a boulder catches the lead character in a cavern.  He eventually severs his arm and frees himself.  This like Gravity was a film about perseverance and will.

Ang Lee’s Life of Pi was a film about a young man stranded in the middle of the ocean after a huge ship he was on sunk, killing everyone aboard including his family.  This film was also about perseverance and will power, man vs. nature.

My favorite thing about Gravity was the silence, it was Zen like.  She was alone and it was up to her, in spite of seemingly incalculable odds, to use her brain and figure out a way to solve a problem and this was all after she accepted death, looking it right in the face.  That story never gets old because every human being on this planet can relate to it.  Most of us live our whole lives without ever really seeing what we are capable of in the face of death.  Or for that matter, achieving something we start out believing is beyond our reach. 

 

Most of us point in fact are underachievers, myself included.  There are reasons for this, whether it’s a childhood lesson that you will amount to nothing, no matter how hard you try or for some reason you think you want something but in actuality you don’t.  I think a lot of it comes down to laziness and procrastination, ‘I’ll deal with it tomorrow’.  Tomorrow is that fantasy land where everything desired gets done and today is an infected land filled with weight and reality.  

In Sandra Bullock’s case in the film, she was using space as a way of escape.  A woman fixated on her detailed work away from the world, is able to forget about the biggest tragedy of her life, the loss of her daughter, who died in an accident.  As horrible a loss that is, that doesn’t end Bullock’s life, her life forges on.  What we do with a life drenched in tragedy is deal with it and not hide from it.  We dig deep within ourselves and live again and that’s what the heart of this film is about. 

A rebirth.

Parkland, JFK and Propagandizing the Murder of a President

by Christopher Barr

"What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by an American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living...not merely peace for Americans, but peace for all men and women; not merely peace in our time, but peace for all time."    - JFK

Parkland is about the aftermath of the John F. Kennedy assassination in Dallas, Texas on November.22, 1963.  It follows various people around the chaotic events that came after the murder, focusing on Parkland hospital in Dallas where the president was rushed to after being shot in the head, also the events that surrounded Lee Harvey Oswald when he was rushed to Parkland after being shot by Jack Ruby.

The film follows the events, leading up to and after, Abraham Zapruder shooting his infamous film of the event itself.  Also events at the Dallas FBI field office where it was determined that Oswald was in their office a mere 10 days prior but what was mistakenly deemed not a threat. 

It’s hard to believe that this film isn’t just a propaganda film to help combat the fallout of the 50^th anniversary of the assassination.  Questions will be asked as well as TV specials on the event will likely air, leading up to the anniversary.  This film doesn’t answer anything new and distorts the events themselves; also it relies on the tall glass of Americana bullshit that the government shills out to the people regularly.  Like the sappiness of how better they all are compared to the rest of the world.  The film is a color by numbers of the Warren Commission Report covered up view of the events of the assassination.

Religion played a big part in the movie, everyone always blessing each other of blessing god or themselves.  Fake tender moments of sorrow and disbelief ran throughout the film.  All the characters were one dimensional with the exception of Robert Oswald, Lee’s brother.  Speaking of Lee, there was a scene in the film after Oswald was captured and taken into custody that he was able to speak to his brother Robert.  A catatonic looking Oswald walked in the room mumbling cryptic slurs at his brother with a very calm disposition.  If history serves, Oswald was a wreck when he was taken into custody as any man would who was accused of a crime he didn’t commit.  In this film they portrayed him as a caught man that was going to get what was coming to him.  

The film reminded me yet again of how afraid the American people are of their wrathful government, because this film played it safe, Hallmark-card style.  The evidence of a second shooter is overwhelming in this case; it makes you wonder if quantum mechanics and applied physics aren’t really taught is schools so the confused public can’t work out the logic of the events themselves, but is rather subject to the experts on "Fox News" and "CNN" to get their evidence.

21 years ago Oliver Stone’s JFK film told the story of the events after the assassination.  The difference here is Stone’s film clearly did its research and cared, two essential components that horribly lacked in Parkland. Stone’s film felt pissed off at the cover story, it felt frustrated at the growing propaganda campaign to manipulate the public into thinking that Oswald was the killer and acted alone.  Oswald apparently shot Kennedy from the six floor of the Texas Book Depository because of his “hatred of American society” and his “perpetual discontentment” and was acting “without regard to consequences”.

Like September 11^th, 2001, the facts of the JFK assassination is so convoluted that the truth becomes so buried that the worlds most renowned Paleo-Prospector wouldn’t be able to excavate it properly, and that’s the point I think.  All the conspiracy theories are an injustice in themselves, all wanting to surface the truth but collectively drowning that possibility.  Truth becomes unattainable in this web of theory, what one thinks happened based on whatever evidence they uncover.  Some say the secret service limo driver did it by accident when he heard a car backfire and panicked.  The truth does exist but we have robbed our ability to ascertain it because of our subjective views on objectivity.  We add, we add emotion and hatred and view points to an event that requires none to understand it.  9/11 is swamped in conspiracy theory to such an extent that those that really orchestrated it can sit back and say, ‘good luck figuring it out’. 

By this notion of only seeing what we want to see, destroys the investigation at the outset, contaminating it with ideology and conjecture.  The cover story stands, period.  Lee Harvey Oswald shot he 35^th president of the United States of America from the six floor of the Texas Book Depository building, shooting into the president’s motorcade, specifically the open-top limo hitting Kennedy and governor John Connally before delivering a fatal shot to Kennedy’s head all within a 4.5 to 7 second spurt.  Oswald fled the scene among the chaos and was caught an hour later inside a movie theatre after shooting to death Dallas police officer D. Tippit.  He was taken into custody and later killed by one Jack Ruby. 

19 hijackers with box cutters commandeered four planes on 9/11 to attack America and its freedom.  It doesn’t matter that the phone system was shut down in Dallas and Washington during the JFK assassination, to control the flow of information, which allowed the government to program their cover story into the minds of their ignorant public, or that Vice President Dick Cheney ordered NORAD to shut down during the actual attacks on New York City and Washington on 9/11.  Just because we know that Oswald, the lone gunman, and the 19 highjackers wouldn’t have the connections to exact such things doesn’t make them any less guilty, they’re guilty because the government and their multimedia news story-tellers say so.

You can bet that crazy Bill O’Reilly on the O’Reilly Factor will be dispelling all conspiracy theorist as nut jobs come November when his program along with Fox news discusses the assassination’s 50^th year anniversary.  The point is they have to, they have to promote their history at all cost, because that history, as distorted at it is, is the fantasy fabric that binds what’s left of that country together.  That’s all that’s left, we’re right and you’re wrong childhood playground politics, and that’s where Parkland falls in.  To hell with the conspiracy, let’s just tug on the emotional aspects of the nostalgia, trampling over the man’s memory as they go.

Traversing the fantasy doesn’t seem to be a possibility with these odds; the bubble seems to appear well intact.  What hope is there in a country when sticking your head in the sand isn’t only better for you but is also patriotic, and what’s best for a country who is desperately hanging on by a thread?  For many countries in the world we would chalk this up as growing pains, America is a young teenager and needs time to mature.  That’s fine but America has a mass military armada that could level the earth as we know it.  On a smaller scale, that’s like putting guns in the hands of ignorant, iron-pumping, knuckle-draggers and call them police as they shoot down an unarmed women in her car, with her child in the backseat, while panicking because she has guns pointing at her and her child from every direction.  Magnify that by a million and we see an army of brainwashed men with machine guns and politicians with their fingers on the nuclear triggers.  America has become the bully that wants your lunch money and with that sensibility we must ask ourselves; should we be worried?  You’re goddamn right we should be worried.

Prisoners and the Moral Path to Reciprocity

by Christopher Barr

Prisoners is about two little girls that go missing and the search to return them safely back home.  Hugh Jackman plays the father of one of the girls that takes his desire to get his daughter back to a very violent and extreme level.  Jake Gyllenhaal plays a detective assigned to the case.  He brings a suspect in, Alex Jones (Info Wars’s Alex Jones will surely see this use of his name as some sort of government conspiracy to associate his name with a perverted idiot) then has to let him go due to lack of evidence.  Jackman kidnaps Jones and brings him to an abandon apartment building and because he lacked information in his respective cognitive mapping, he resorts to violence and begins to brutally torture Jones until he reveals the whereabouts of the two little girls, Jackman is certain he knows.  Jackman enlists help of the other little girl’s father, Terrance Howard, to hold Jones while Jackman bashes his face in.  It’s clear that Howard’s character is the far more conflicted one of the two.  Howard doesn’t think that violence is the answer.

The film explores the notion of violence, faith and how far is one willing to go to get a loved one free from harm.  The how-far-are-you-willing-to-go was explored throughout the TV show 24, with Jack Bauer performing very violent acts on people he believed would get him closer to stopping the bomb or the assassination or the spread of the virus, or god forbid Kim Bauer is conveniently kidnapped again.

I think most people would act to help save a loved one.  How they would act would likely depend on it happening.  To me what was more important in this film was aside from the obvious, faith and the good book was used to justify acts of violence onto other human beings.

Religion has been used over many a millennia to help motive and exact violence, or it’s been used to help explain to the ignorant how atrocities come about in the first place.  Like in the case of vampires, ghouls and werewolves are but a few mythological creatures that were used in the dark ages to explain horrific crimes on people.  These creatures back then were something people actually believed in, sure today they’ve been glamoured up and put up on the silver screen, but back in the day they scared people into believing they were the ones responsible for stealing babies out of Romanian villages, only to slaughter them.  Then there’s the lunacy of Vlad the Impaler who tortured and murdered in the thousands, having his soldiers impale his many victims on top of pointed logs while he had lunch out in the field watching.   

Bram Stoker and history soon deified Vlad Dracula into the shadowy minds of millions.  People just couldn’t believe that human beings can be monsters, and I don’t mean the fictional kind, but just a man acting under his own volition, without any help from mystical things that aren’t actually there.  The Son of Sam, David Berkowitz blamed his killing spree on an evil demon dog giving him his orders.  There’s a good chance he was under a CIA program called MK-Ultra making him do it or that he simply had a screw loose.   

Religion over many years and civilizations fought to take control over our sensory perception of the world we are placed into.  By controlling our only tool we use to interact with that world, language.  Religion has become the answer to all the questions about the known universe and the creatures that reside on our blue planet.  That primitive way of thinking about the world still holds a binding grip on the majority of people in all countries.   

Religion and morality are not bound together; Religion is an ideological system of control that belongs exclusively to the symbolic order, where all is defined through language.  Morality is about how one interacts with the actual world with these symbolic rules.  One adopts a code of ethics to live by and navigate life through.  Immanuel Kant developed a central philosophical concept in his deontological moral philosophy called the Categorical Imperative.  This universal law suggests that there are certain objective ethical rules in the world, so there is a duty by the individual to recognize that and to act with reverence.

We should not treat others as if they are tools, this is the problem with what Jackman’s character in Prisoners did to Alex Jones.  By using Jones as a means to an end, he broke the fundamental principle of Kantian morality.  But religion was conveniently there to help fulfill his need to execute an eye for an eye code of justice.  Understandably Jackman was desperate, who wouldn’t be.  But to use religion to help fuel his need for a greater good was morally weak, as he mildly struggled with his actions.  That’s not to say what he did was entirely wrong, his bulldozer approach could have been less obvious but he wanted his daughter back.  The problem is how he morally justified it to himself rather than just doing it.  His reasons for capturing Jones were understandable to a degree.  The girls disappeared by his camper van and he was caught fleeing from the police, smells guilty to me.

Spoiler Alert!

But he wasn’t guilty, he was mentally disabled, but the girls got to his place via his camper van so that the real villain of the film could imprison them.  She wanted to do the work of the lord by exposing the sinners, who often hide in ordinary men.  She was using religion to satisfy a much sicker psychological need to hurt other people.  Jackman’s character does get punished for what he did because the religious hold over him didn’t have that good a grip, as it doesn’t with most people, the real guilt for what he did sunk in.  We also don’t see it at the end when Gyllenhaal hears the whistle blowing, it’s almost like the director wants us to know that he survived that pit but he did a horrible immoral thing to another human being, so let’s exit the film without seeing him freed.  I think that was a great idea because giving Jackman the satisfaction of seeing his daughter might have let him off the hook a little bit by the audience.  Because the moral of the story is the ends don’t always justify the means. 

Rock n' Roll Movies and Living in the Past

by Christopher Barr

 

"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music."  

                                                                    -Aldous Huxley

My favorite rock n’ roll film is Almost Famous (2000).  Cameron Crowe’s film captures a rock essence rarely seen in films about music.  There’s a scene in his film where Billy Crudup’s character, Russell, has a falling out with his band and they are all on a bus travelling down a highway in silence.  Then Elton John’s ‘Tiny Dancer’ breaks the silence and reminds this group and I think the films audience, the magic that music brings to people, how sometimes above all, a great record can save a life.  Music allows us to connect with the world outside of our minds in a profound way.

 

This is Spinal Tap (1984) captured the hilarity and silliness of Rock n’ Roll and where it was heading and A Hard Day’s Night captured the craziness of fame, albeit still considered the greatest film about rock n’ roll, I could also say the same for Don’t Look Back (1967) about the growing popularity of Bob Dylan and his adjustment to fame.  But I would rather focus of films about rock music leaving great biographies like Ray (2004) and Walk the Line (2005) for another article.

 

High Fidelity (2000) is a film I mean to talk about.  It’s a film that celebrates people celebrating great music in the way they live their lives.  These main characters certainly had problems but in spite of all that they still went to church, only that their church was where The Velvet Underground’s ‘Oh, Sweet Nuthin’ and The Vaselines’ ‘Jesus wants me for a Sunbeam’ blasted on speakers.  I love a film that surrounds itself with great music.  One of my favorites isn’t even a film about music is Garden State.  Loved that soundtrack, I loved how Zack Braff used music in his movie to travel and breathe alongside his characters.  Because in life music does that, it is there in our minds nudging us, reminding us about the past and what helps us define our present.

 

School of Rock is up there as one of my favorites.  What I loved about it was Jack Black knew he was right about rock.  He knew that this style of music shook him to his bones and that meant something.  He taught his students the history of Rock with the detail of a microbiologist.

Great rock movies should make those that are new to rock and to those who have left rock behind for day jobs and football games, to fall in love with it.  There is nothing like rock n’ roll and like most creative genesis’, rock was birthed out of oppression.  Rock came from the same place Shakespeare came from as well as Picasso, it came from changing what’s come before, and breaking down social and political barriers to allow a voice in that otherwise would be beat down and discarded.

The birth of Rock n’ roll likely came to be with the merging of African musical tradition and European instrumentation.   Jazz, gospel, folk and Blues-influenced swing brought in a new form of funk that caught the ears of many up and coming singer song writers.  Electronic instruments with offbeat rhythmic tones and relatively simple teen relatable lyrics set rock n’ roll off and running.

With the song “My baby rocks me with a steady roll” giving rock n’ roll it’s title, thanks to a Cleveland disc jockey and Billy Haley’s “Rock around the Clock” in 1955, the teen finally found a relatable form of music that spoke to them personally and the right kind of sex appeal they had for the artists, shake, rattle and rolling it.  Buddy Holly added to this rock fervor but it was to Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Elvis Presley that blow the rockabilly roof of the jailhouse.

Chuck Berry was one of the first black performers to appeal to both white and black teen audiences.  His electric energy on stage with his rhythm and blues sound and his dancing style gave him a sexual prowess that singled him out as understandably one of the greats.  Little Richard was known for his wild and crazy performances and his flamboyant appearance lending his talent to help birth in bands with the likes of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.   Elvis Presley was the rock n’ roll king, hands down and he made girls faint.  Also he brought in a unique sound to a very young genre of music.  His style and good looks solidified a form of music that was still learning to get its legs.

When I listen to “Like a Rolling Stone” by Bob Dylan, I listen to this like a lover of the great wines of the world would drink a Bordeaux, Château Pétrus from a glass, allowing it to trickle subtly into their mouth to rest on their pallet, letting it sit for a moment before it sinks to their throat with a melodious taste that resonates and ripples through their very being.   Songs and the music that support them will always come in many flavors, people will always have their tastes.  But there is a recognizable aesthetic to music that is not up for debate.  Like the fine wines, great music earned their stay in the hall of fame.

The Beatles were an English band from Liverpool, forming in 1960.  This little band from across the pond became the most influential band in the rock era.  They Fab Four-ed it from album to album with chasing girls and many TV appearance until the band got serious, as legend has it, a conversation between Bob Dylan and John Lennon led to Dylan going electric and The Beatles speaking out about the war and life.  Steering Rock n’ Roll into a smarter and less teen friendly direction.  Bob Dylan didn’t set out for screaming girls and media attention, he certainly got that but he stuck to his guns by writing songs that is my opinion changed the world.  This man is a poet and a philosopher, one of those gifted individuals that was able to reach a mass amount of people and enlighten them when he himself was being enlightened, showing the world that you can think and love your rock n’ roll at the same time.  Where rock n’ roll was birthed out of complexity in music but simplicity in lyrics, Dylan taught the world to embrace complexity in both.

Wayne’s World for me as a kid was a great platform for rock n’ roll.  It was fun and these two guys loved Queen and like all true rockers, hated authority.   Excellent!  Because that is the true kernel at the center of it all, is authority.  That’s one of the big problems of rock n’ roll, is it has a life span.  The paintings of Van Gogh and the music of Mozart live on through the ages among the young and the old.  Rock n’ roll has yet to enjoy such a vintage in the history of man.  Maybe it’s too young for a place in the savoring minds of the people.  We are currently being paraded with many ‘old bands’ capitalizing on the rebooting of society.  A lot of these geriatric singers are suiting for one last crack at the old days, with new films like Rock of Ages.  A movie that is an embarrassment to actual rock n’ roll that Almost Famous, School of Rock and High Fidelity honored and fought to preserve.  Rock is being recycled and its legacy sold.

 

I entertained the idea of watching Rock of Ages because of Tom Cruise’s hilarious turn in Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder.  I ended up watching half the movie because of Tom Cruise’s over the top, Axel Rose/Steve Tyler impersonation, which in some cases was actually funny.  But for the most part the movie was about how out of touch we all are with regards to rock n’ roll, where it’s become a parody to laugh at.  Maybe This is Spinal Tap just knew it was coming but unless it’s underground our it’s Radiohead, the bells seem to be no longer about to rock.

 

We have Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones, we have Bob Dylan and The Beatles, we have the history of rock n’ roll alive and well.  The platform is changing, the CD is even dying and rock is not part of the future no more than art is after Jackson Pollack.  So what I think is so great about these films about rock n’ roll isn’t about hope for the future but being thankful for a past that you existed in, where you can press play and sit back in the dark with a beer in your hand and just listen to the rain dropping as The Doors ‘Riders on the Storm’ begins.  Let that past sound marinate in your mind as you enjoy the freedom of being in the present.