A CLOSER LOOK at CLOSER

Finally, last Thursday I got to see a movie, which I desperately hoped to see (unlike my mishap with Million Dollar Baby) in the previous weeks. I first heard the movie "Closer", from an officemate, whom I really trust when it comes to these kind of things. (So . . . do I have to thank her for this?) Anyway, it is not easy to be detached in the real world when you are working almost 18 hours a day, seven days a week. Huh! Deparment of Labor, anyone?

Anyway, enough with the babble, this entry is supposed to be serious. (Please note that while writing this, Damien Rice is shouting in the earphones stucked in my ear.)

"Closer" is the kind of mind-blowing film that will leave your head ringing for hours afterward. It's not profound or preachy, but rather so subtle and smart that by trying to unlock all of its cleverness and irony, you'll likely be as frustrated as a high school dropout trying to solve algorithms.

"Closer", set in modern-day London, is actually a pretty simple story once you drain it of heartbreak. It follows four strangers who meet up by chance. They pair off, dance the tango, switch partners and repeat. It's the square dance of infidelity.

Obituary writer Dan (Jude Law) meets stripper Alice (Natalie Portman) by accident - literally - when she's knocked down by a cab in front of him, soon after arriving in London from New York. He takes her to the hospital, and they fall for each other. Dan meets Anna (Julia Roberts) because she will be taking his pictures for the cover of his book. He hit on Anna, Anna declined. Dan frustrated went in the internet posing as a sexually aggressive female, met with dermatologist Larry (Clive Owen) in a sex chat room, Dan, introduced himself as Anna. He plays a practical joke on Larry which ends up with Larry meeting photographer Anna at her favourite spot: the aquarium. Anna's exhibition of photos brings them all together under one roof, where the two men are attracted to the other's woman. As time goes by, the relationships criss-cross as the four characters love, lie, betray and abuse each other.

Each of these characters is plagued by a striking duality. There's Dan, the obituary writer and failed novelist who fancies himself a dashing Romeo but manages to self-destruct after wooing women way out of his league. Alice, a stripper who's probably the most polluted yet still innocent of the group. Anna the photographer who wants order and control, but invites chaos into her life. And finally Dr. Larry is the Brit dermatologist who's savage or rather a Neathertal yet sweet...kind of. If there's a God, they're all going to hell.

The movie is a movie. It is not a movie that is likely to make you think that, "Hey! This can happen and this is happenin"

Well, there is a possibility but goodness gracious! If that is case! Let's start praying for redemption.

This is the kind of movie that will make you hope not to happen in your life (of course, not if you are manic depressive, you'd enjoy the brou-ha-ha).

Anyway, in one of the scenes, during the arty photo exhibit of Anna, Alice offers a critique:
"It's a lie," she says. "A bunch of sad strangers photographed beautifully."

Gazing at an oversized portrait of herself crying, she adds that the pictures allow the sharply attired patrons to feel superior to the pathetic mopes on display, but in a culturally acceptable way because this is art, after all.

Judging by Alice's denunciation of Anna's photos, self-loathing runs deep in "Closer." Playwright-turned-screenwriter Patrick Marber could apply her speech (which he wrote) to his own work.

Marber, like his characters, also may loathe those who admire him. The type of people who would applaud his play and Nichols' screen version are precisely the type of people in Anna's gallery, young urban snobs who consider themselves aesthetes because they use the word "transgressive" to praise the latest incendiary play, novel or film.

"Transgressive" is pseudointellectual for "shocking." Nichols and Marber use a barrage of vulgar sexual dialogue to shock the suburban bourgeoisie who will wander into this snake pit of a film because that nice Julia Roberts is in it.

And I am not one of those aesthetes. And I'm not a Julia Roberts fan either!

The movie is simply a love story but not quite. There is nothing simple about love - how can anything be simple if you cannot even define it? "Closer" puts the magnifying glass on that intangible bubble that envelops us when a magic spell is cast between two people. A man and woman meet, are attracted to each other, begin a relationship.... It is what happens next that is the complicated part.

We do not need a movie to tell us what's the next thing is.

The next thing is, we are all lying.

"Lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off," Alice says performing a lap dance for Larry after returning to stripping.

"What's so great about the truth?" Dan asks Anna, after she has divorced Larry. "Try lying instead. It's the currency of the world."

Ironically all this talk of lying means "Closer" will be praised for its "brutal honesty."

Love is a double-edged sword: it can destroy or inspire. As barriers and shields are stripped away and Dan symbolically puts on his glasses at the end of the film, we can all see more clearly.

TRIBUTE TO "GLAM" ROCK

I would not let this moment pass without bloggin it.

It was two years ago when I borrowed a couple of VCDs from a friend.

It was years ago when I first saw the movie, "Hedwig and the Angry Inch".

I just remember it now when I was browsing through the music that I have, thinking what to upload and what not to upload and I came across the Soundtrack of "Headwig and the Angry Inch" movie.

Suddenly, I felt the rock 'n roll blood in me.

Who knows exactly why, but there's something thrilling about rock 'n' roll that involves cross-dressing. Perhaps it's because rock 'n' roll is all about adopting a persona or a stance anyway -- why not try on the other gender while you're at it, see what it feels like? Smearing lines across the sexes has been a feature of rock since its beginnings.

Suddenly, the multiplied permutations of possible identities were blissfully freeing: A man could look like a woman but sing like a man; a woman could look like a man and sing like one, too. And anyone could look good in a dress -- depending on what form of "good" you were after.

"Hedwig and the Angry Inch" is a story of a tortured rock star who was born a man but who performs as a woman after a botched sex-change operation, "Hedwig" is only partly a meditation on one man/woman's search for identity; assigning too much depth to the movie's themes is a mistake. More important, it's that rarest of creatures: a rock musical that actually works.

"Hedwig and the Angry Inch" is largely about spectacle; the story unfolds in the background, and while the songs support and enrich it, they're not planted sternly like giant signposts to its meaning. Hedwig, a transplant from the tragically divided city of Berlin, is divided himself: As he travels the States with his band, playing a string of Red Lobster-type restaurants to audiences rendered incredulous by his boyish brand of girl glam, he reveals his story in flashbacks between musical numbers.

His most recent heartbreak involves his affair with a rock superstar named Tommy Gnosis (Michael Pitt), who has catapulted to success on the basis of songs that were actually co-written by Hedwig. Hedwig is in the process of suing Gnosis: With the help of his manager, Phyliss (played wonderfully by Andrea Martin, who's like a tart and tarty den mother), he's in the process of a messy lawsuit to get credit (and royalties) for the songs.

But Hedwig's real troubles start much earlier, when, as Hansel, a teenager in Berlin, he falls in love with a seductive hunk of meat masquerading as an American serviceman (Maurice Dean Wint). The G.I. claims to love him and wants to marry him, but in order to get a marriage license, Hedwig would have to undergo a physical exam. His mother helpfully suggests a sex change, and even knows just the doctor to do it. But the operation goes awry, leaving a sewn-up gash and a stump of flesh ("the angry inch") where Hedwig's penis -- or was it his identity? -- used to be. As he explains in one of his songs, his major feature has been reduced to a sorry mound with "a scar running down it like a sideways grimace on an eyeless face."

Hedwig becomes consumed with finding the other half of his innermost self -- the part of himself that has somehow gone missing or, worse, has been stolen. His existential angst is a suitable excuse on which to hang songs, and it's also a rich playground for both Hedwig as a performer and Mitchell as an actor. Mitchell's Hedwig, with his bitten-fruit lips, assortment of glamorous stripper wigs and wardrobe of trashy-fishnet finery, earns both our sympathy and our frustration as he muddles his way through his identity crisis. We see him hurting the people around him, like the biker-masculine Yitzhak, his bandmate and lover (played with the right mix of poignance and humor by Miriam Shor), who harbors a secret desire to be Hedwig.

Mitchell plays all the stock angles of femininity that every drag queen worth his salt has to: He's pouty, petulant and possessive, always the diva. But he also lets us behind the false eyelashes. There's a massive shot of theatricality in his über-feminine Hedwig -- he's scoldingly funny when he bitches out a bandmate for throwing one of his bras in the dryer -- but his fragility pulses beneath the surface in waves. You feel something for him even when, at his invitation, you're laughing at him.

There's not much gloriousness in the movies these days -- not many moments that deliver true spectacle, that make you realize you've stopped breathing for a few seconds. I had a few of those moments in "Hedwig," all of them during musical numbers. (Especially the Wig in A Box Number)

"Hedwig" is aggressively, winkingly glam. Trask's songs are enjoyable as both sendup and tribute. Sometimes their drama is almost inextricable from their knowing sensibility, as in the ballad "The Origin of Love," where Mitchell's "Velvet Goldmine" crooning explains how men and women became divided from a single being in the first place. It's a little corny, but it still sounds damn good. And the sight of Hedwig and his band transforming a trashy trailer into a glitter-rock stage during "Wig in a Box" was so exhilarating I almost died. The movie is pure theater, as it should.

Oh . . . well you can be hard in a dress, or soft in a pair of leather trousers. The blood flows to every extremity from one source: How fast it beats determines how hard it rocks, whether you're working with 1 inch or 6.

(I have uploaded by the way a couple of Hedwig's songs in my music box . . . you can check it out)

****************

A BRIEF note:

LOSING MY RELIGION

I have this very funny feeling right now. I was like hopping and browsing through the blogs in my friend's list. And listening to REM's LOSING MY RELIGION. I was unconciously singing along with the song and at the same time, reading SWIMBUD's entry about the POPE's passing.
For the past days I have seen countless of articles, news and so as blog entries dedicated entirely to the "unfortunate" passing of the Pope John Paul II.

I HAVE VOWED NEVER EVER as in NEVER EVER to write anything about that. But I just felt the need.

Remember, coincidentally while reading an entry about the Pope, REM is singing in my ears:

Life is biggerIt's bigger than you
. . . . .
I thought that I heard you laughing

I thought that I heard you sing

I think I thought

I saw you try
. . . . . .

Losing my religion

Actually, in the real world . . . . I have already lost my religion . . . it has been so long . . . or rather, I'm not very sure if religion lost me. Anyway, does it really matter who lost whom?
Now, if you are religious . . . one who follows the dogmas of the church and all. Just skip this entry. Promise! I really do not want you to feel that itch of being burned in hell after life for reading my "immoral" and "diabolical" thoughts.

First and foremost, I'm not very affected by the death of the Pope because, I really do not belong to the Roman Catholic Church.

I'm just a bit weary because this might be the sign for the end of the world! Waaaaaa. And I'm still SINGLE!

So THAT. I feel sorry for the rest of the world for losing their POPE.

The relationship paradox: Why have them if they end?

THE RELATIONSHIP PARADOX: Why have them if they end?

Growing up, I never understood the idea of making your bed. Sure, if you are having a party or people are coming over to look at the house, you want things to be neat and tidy. But for everyday living, why make the bed? You are just going to climb into it later and mess it up again. It seems like an exercise in futility, especially if you are the only one who ever sees the bed. To this day, I don't make my bed very often. Relationships are not exactly like making the bed. Certainly, they are more complex, with added benefits that the satisfaction of hospital corners just can't match. However, just like a made bed gets unmade, so many relationships end. This leads me to wonder this week if relationships are really worth the trouble.

I owe a debt of gratitude this week to a long-time friend that i'll have to cover up as GUS. I was having coffee with him recently and the conversation turned to relationships. Gus is a little older than I am, and he has been in his share of relationships, as I have. He was wondering aloud why we bother getting into relationships if they all just end. After all, we invest a lot into a relationship -- not just our time and money, but our emotions and the emotions of our friends and family. When a relationship ends through death, anger or attrition, it leaves everything a little worse than it was before.

It seems like a cynical view on the surface. Life doesn't come with guarantees, and relationships are always a risky venture. And just because life ends at a certain point, that doesn't invalidate the value of a lifetime spent together. The issue for me is about the effort of it. For most of us, we don't marry our high school sweetheart and stay together for 50 years. We string together a lifetime of fits and starts in the dating world, racking up experience points along the way. After a few decades of dating, bookended by "this is forever" and "it sounded good at the time," it is easy to feel a little battle-weary from the experience. Still, is that any reason to throw in the towel altogether?

Past relationships that have ended in failure can create better people to be in a relationship with, if the parties involved learn any lessons from the experience. Quite often, people stumble from relationship to identical relationship without ever recognizing their own patterns or mistakes. For them, I think giving up on the notion of eternal happiness with one other person is a noble gesture. Those who learn and grow from relationships might finally meet someone else who has matured, but the odds seem very unlikely. Statistics show that the majority of relationships are going to end -- so, clearly, your chances are slim indeed.

Despite all that pessimism, I think that there is great value in relationships, no matter how they work out. There are benefits in sharing experiences with someone, even if they aren't still around to share the memory with you 20 years later. Life is a great adventure meant to be taken in the company of others. Pain in life comes with the job, and shutting yourself off may spare your emotions but it also provides a life half lived. While it is true that I continue to have no interest in making my bed, I do think I will continue to give relationships a try. After all, it is more fun to spend time in an unmade bed with someone else.

TWO NIGHTS AFTER . . . . . . . .

And the desert suddenly became my home . . . . .

I thought I would never escape the quicksand . . . . .

The sand storms that keep on blinding my vision . . . . . . .

The tormenting heat of the sun . . . . . .

My life is barren . . . .

As barren as the desert I'm in . . . . .

Dry . . . . .

All the time, I was wishing for an OASIS to come my way . . . .

An OASIS . . . . .

I hope I'm not only wishing . . . . . .


Suddenly, I saw a sparkling shine as the sun's light reflected on its blue waters . . . . .

My OASIS . . . . .

I hope this will bring life into this death trap . . . .

I hope this is not a MIRAGE . . . . . .