the cassandra pages

The Best Thing I've Read about "Roma"

"Roma" exposes Mexico's darkest secret,

by Marcela Garcia in the Boston Globe

 

Such an excellent essay by Marcel Garcia. A number of people I've talked to may have liked this movie, but when we've talked about it in more depth, it's like we've seen two different films. That's always possible with a book or film, of course, but in this case, and at this particular time in history, I've found the dissonance quite disturbing.

 

It always bothers me that so many people think they already know all there is to know (or all they want to know) about the complex cultures south of the American border, when they actually know very little. I'm probably hyper-sensitive because I too was quite ignorant before I started going to Mexico and learning about it myself; I wasn't even sure I wanted to go, except that I knew there was a tradition of art that I wanted to see firsthand. Now I wonder how I could have been so limited. Where does this ignorance come from? Is it because we are inundated with media "information" and mass culture through Hollywood films and TV, and equate that with real knowledge? Is it because most people don't travel to Latin America beyond the resort beaches? Is it because so few of us form real friendships with people from different cultures, religions and ethnicities than ourselves, where we are willing to actually listen to and learn from the truth of their lived experience?  Perhaps most people simply don't want to be stretched in this direction because it also requires looking at oneself.

 

I've now been to Mexico City for six extended periods of time, and have relationships with a number of Latin American friends. Yet with every visit and conversation, as with people from every culture different from mine, I realize how little I knew, and still know. Of course I've become uncomfortably aware of my own privilege, and ability to travel and come back to my far easier North American life. But it's a lot more than that. I want to be as open as possible when I see a film or read a book or talk to someone, as well as when I'm traveling, so that I am able to learn. I don't want to live in a North American bubble and take it with me everywhere I go. We all do that to some extent, but dropping it consciously seems to be more than most people want to do.

 

I also know firsthand how uncomfortable this process can be. I've been doing it for my entire adult life, partly because I married outside my culture, but also because of a longstanding desire for knowledge of otherness and for being stretched. I know everyone doesn't share this, or feel that the reward of growing wiser is worth the pain of feeling uncomfortable, hurt, misunderstood, or being in the minority, where we suddenly have to listen and accept different ways, and not be in a position of control or power. I get it. Most of us prefer to stay in our own tribe, however narrowly or broadly we define that. The world is moving in a different direction, though, and we can either accept that, understand our own privilege, and change -- or fight against it, which I see so-called liberals doing just as much as conservatives, when it involves actually confronting one's own stereotypes and sense of entitlement or superiority. It's one thing to oppose building a wall, or separating families, and entirely another to actually learn what is beyond that border, or who those families are, or our own complicity in the systems that have made them want to leave -- perhaps for a life of domestic servitude in America.

 

Roma confronts racism in Mexican culture, but it also asks us to look within. So I was grateful for Garcia's insights and explanations about her own culture, and the lens through which North America has viewed both Mexico and this particular film. I'm grateful she took the time to write this piece.

Amour: Thinking Ahead, Uncomfortably

For weeks now, I've been hearing and reading about Amour, the much-discussed film by Michael Haneke, especially with my friend Teju Cole, who wrote a review of it for the New Yorker blog. Early yesterday morning I took this photograph for him; the feeling of the image seems to express some of my own trepidation about seeing the film, which is no doubt inextricably tied up in my own feelings about age itself, and particularly about facing old age with a lifelong, beloved partner.

Whether I'll actually go see the movie is still up in the air. I find that I have problems with its premise - a kind of "what-if" scenario designed perhaps to make us think, perhaps to shock, perhaps to manipulate our shared anxiety, with its depiction of a potential reality. What is amour, actually -- what is love, at these extremes?

For me, having helped care for elderly loved ones, it wouldn't, couldn't end this way, nor would I want it to end that way for me. A different path is understandable, perhaps. I felt that these end-times were sacred, and very much a part of the long lives I had been part of. The medical care did a great deal to alleviate pain and suffering; perhaps I have too much faith in it, but that's still what I observed. We'd want to try to be faithful right up to the end -- that's what we promised -- though there's no black-and-white answer, beforehand, to what one would want, or do, only the grey of a cold morning.

Have you seen the film? What did you think?

(here's a very different take on the film, also on the New Yorker blog, by Richard Brody.)

Cairo Time

Yesterday afternoon, discouraged by the rainy weather, we decided to go with our house guest to a movie. We chose "Cairo Time," a new film by the Montreal-born director Ruba Nadda, who now lives in Toronto. It looked good in the description we read, but turned out to have some real flaws. I'm astounded that this film won the audience favorite award for Canadian films at the Toronto Film Festival, and wonder if that could have happened in Montreal with its large Middle-Eastern and well-traveled population.

Starring the indie-film actress Patricia Clarkson (Juliette) and Alexander Siddig (Tareq) the story involves a happily-married blonde magazine editor who flies to Cairo for a vacation with her UN-employed husband, who's been working in a refugee camp in Gaza. But violence erupts in the camp, and her husband can't get back to Cairo.  Instead, his old colleague and friend, a tall handsome Arab named Tareq, picks Juliette up at the airport and eventually becomes her Egyptian guide.  No one was miscast, but I found the story and direction completely implausible, even to the point of being silly and guilty of unfortunate stereotyping.

Juliette wanders around Cairo tossing her bleached-blonde hair, wearing sleeveless dresses, plunging necklines, and short skirts, and wonders tearfully why men are following and hassling her -- this is a supposedly intelligent woman who beats Tareq at chess and edits a successful magazine, and who is married to a seasoned UN administrator of long Middle Eastern experience? Come on. Even her Cairo guidebook, often consulted on-screen, would give her the basic guidelines. Behavior that might be believable in an adolescent character comes off as ridiculous in a middle-aged woman of Juliette's background; the craziest moment is when she stubbornly boards a bus full of Palestinians bound for Gaza because she "just wants to see" her husband, but of course the bus is stopped by military police and she's taken off, cell phone in hand, to call Tareq to come and fetch her. Tareq is pleased when Juliette finally trades her floral sundresses for a long-sleeved shirt and headscarf for a visit to a mosque -- but the next day she's back in a sleeveless yellow number and no bra. He tells her to be careful, pointing out that three tourists were recently killed outside their hotel. "Why?" she asks. "Because they were American," he answers, as if talking to a child. He's bemused one day, irritated to the point of stony silence the next, then non-plussed: is this a pattern that would really make a man like Tareq fall in love?

What I find most disturbing is that films like this perpetuate western attitudes and stereotypes about the "exotic east" and "clueless westerner," and do nothing for the cross-cultural understanding ostensibly at their root. The Canadian director, 36-year old Ruba Nadda, has a Palestinian mother and Syrian father. This film, her second feature, seems shot through western eyes sympathetic to Arab culture but colored less by knowledge of cultural nuance than by the allure of the exotic that Edward Said called "Orientalism." (An article about the actual tournage in Cairo reveals some of the problems Nadda encountered and how she got around them.) Stereotypes abound, not only in behavior of the blonde heroine, but in comments like that of a female friend who (following the requisite lunch in a Bedouin tent) reveals she had an affair with an Arab man: "He became possessive and demanding -- they all do," she says, then adds, with a faraway look in her eyes, "But he was a great lover."

The romance that develops between Juliette and Tareq seems unlikely at best -- he's smart, elegant, restrained, and sophisticated -- what does he see in her? -- and never becomes physical. He's the best actor in the film, but no on-screen sexual tension ever develops between the two of them. And the predictability of the locations weakens the film. In addition to the Bedouins, there's also a carpet-weaving scene, and of course a trip to the pyramids, with our heroine wearing a turquoise chiffon evening dress.

The best parts of the movie are the street shots of Cairo itself, and these certainly increased my long-standing desire to go there with my own "exotic" husband - his last visit there was a long time ago, when his father was working, for real, as a UN administrator of a Gaza camp. But I certainly won't be dressed for the trip by the costumer for this film.

Movie-d Out

The Montreal Film Festival concluded yesterday. At this time we were waiting for the start of our second film in a row, an Iranian production called "Penalty", about a group of people who had become homeless after the Iran-Iraq war and were squatting on the grounds of an old oil refinery; their only joy comes from playing soccer -- and their only hope of finding homes or a better life is to be chosen for the Oil Company team. It sounds a bit like "Rocky" in Farsi, but wasn't at all - it was much more a portrait of the wreckage left by that terrible war, which not only resulted in tremendous casualties on both sides, but rendered many people homeless and left many former soldiers irreparably damaged by chemical weapons.

The earlier film was "Solo quiero caminar", translated as "Just Walking," a Spanish thriller about international drug trafficking, with a twist: the evil but handsome head of the drug cartel is being set up by a gang of four professional thieves, all of whom are women. It was too violent, and I especially hate seeing women getting hurt, but I have to admit that I really liked the movie, and it kept me riveted to my seat. By the end, I was half in love with Diego Luna, as well as the leading actress, Ariadna Gil, and I really, really wanted her red tango dress.

We would have put the second-place film, "Weaving Girl," from China, ahead of the festival's overall winner, the film about the Roma I mentioned earlier. But our personal favorite, not chosen for the main competition, was a Mexican movie, "Caja Negra," by a young director (Ariel Gordon) who was present at the screening. It too was a suspense movie, about a hired assassin and political/corporate intrigue, but made on a small budget -- in his pre-screening remarks, the director said all the animation had been done in his own living room by a team of five people - and almost all the footage was shot using little surveillance cameras, and pieced together to seem as if the whole movie was captured on security videos. The screenplay was terrific, inventive, unusual -- what a pleasure to see something so different, so risky, and so good, and be able to tell the director in person! (This is a 2009 new release, not the 2002 film by Luis Ortega.)

And now we're glad to be able to enjoy the great early fall weather like normal people, instead of blinking mice emerging from their dark holes into the sunlight. Is that why film stars always wear dark glasses?

Film Gluttony

The Montreal World Film Festival began yesterday with an opening gala - we didn't go - but tonight we'll start on our annual movie-binge, which should clear our heads from all lingering dust remaining from the summer of cleaning and moving, and replace it with the excitement and drama of a world tour. Tonight we plan to see two films, a French movie by Tony Gatlif ("Latcho Drom") about a Roma family during the Second World War, and an American art film called "Redland" about a family's desperate wilderness frontier life in the 1930s. Sounds like a grueling and interesting evening; will report.

After the heat of last week, the days have been progressively cooler, and riding my bike up to the studio this morning, it actually felt like fall. It always happens, right around September 1 - that first day when autumn unmistakably arrives, and then there's no going back, in spite of the hot days we'll probably have in September. Apples will soon supplant the peaches, and chrysanthemums the late roses and lilies, and I'd better get ready for it. But damn, that's going to be hard!

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While we're speaking of upcoming events, I want to mention that there are only a few more days left for submissions to qarrtsiluni's "Words of Power" issue, which Dave Bonta and I are editing. The submission period closes at the end of this month, and the theme description is quoted below. We'd especially like a few more visual interpretations of the theme to consider - photography, artwork, multimedia - but your poetry, prose, flash fiction and other writings are more than welcome. Thanks!

Call for Submissions: Words of Power

29 07 2009

In magic, to have said is to have done.
—Eliphas Levi

Again this fall we’re taking the helm ourselves, not for want of volunteer guest editors, but because we had such a blast with last fall’s Journaling the Apocalypse issue that we resolved to do it every year if possible. The submissions period is from August 1 to August 31, and publication will begin around September 15.

This time we’re looking for words of power: curses, spells, charms, prayers, incantations, mantras, sacred scriptures, explicit performative utterances, oaths, or legal instruments. Submissions may consist entirely of such super-charged language, or may riff upon or explore such language. Submissions of visual art may of course take a more figurative approach to the topic; images of amulets and other power-objects, for example, would be welcome. But otherwise we urge contributors not to interpret the theme too broadly. Please don’t just send us a piece of writing that you think is powerful according to some subjective evaluation. We’re looking quite specifically for language freighted with mana and/or executive force, or writing about that kind of language. If you’re not sure whether something qualifies, feel free to query.

Please limit written material to no more than five items per submission, with individual pieces not exceeding 3,000 words. Please refer to the general guidelines before submitting, and note especially the recommendation to query us if we don’t acknowledge receipt within two days — occasional server hiccups and email glitches are a fact of life on the internet.

We look forward to reading your words of power with an unusual admixture of excitement and trepidation. This issue could be a real test of our editorial juju!

—Dave and Beth