Capitalism - Feudalism without the Kings 

Tax the Rich 

Movie Monday - Sleeping Beauty, etc. 

Probably because I still haven't gotten a handle on The Exterminating Angel (Could I possibly just not like this movie?), I've been reluctant to start this post today. But I think I'll absolve myself from my inability to grapple with TEA and just tell you what I have for this Monday.

I've been spending a good portion of the weekend reading reviews of the new movie, Lincoln. I've only seen trailers, but that won't stop me: I don't like it. Considering that trailers are the hooks to grab viewers into the movie house, from them I think I'm going to find a ponderous portrayal of Saint Abe Lincoln played by Daniel Day-Lewis who with every gesture and word has me realizing I'm watching actor, Daniel Day-Lewis, portraying saintly Abe.

Harsh words, you say? OK, I know I'm swimming against the tide since 600 zillion% of the critical reviews for this opus has been positive. But I did wend my way to: 

http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/   aka: Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist (don't you love it?)

where I found a post by Kate Masur (11/30/12) and she succinctly sums up the real problem and danger with such movies as Lincoln. 

To quote her:: By failing to portray independent and verbally astute black characters-even on the periphery-they ended up making a film that perpetuates the culturally authoritative but historically inaccurate idea that white men alone were the authors of abolition.

We're all entitled to imagine how we would make a blockbuster film about Abraham Lincoln-what scenes we'd include and what messages we'd drive home. No one, however, commands the resources, wherewithal, and audience of Spielberg and Kushner (director and screenwriter). Their power to shape our collective understanding of race and democracy is enormous. Their historical dreams and fantasies matter more than ours. That's why it would have been nice if they had gotten this part of the story right. 

Unfortunately, no matter how perceptive we may be regarding the inaccuracies in Lincoln, the clout of a successful director/producer such as Spielberg, establishes the meme. Soon Lincoln will work its way into high school history class viewing and the "great white father" helping those poor, good-natured, but powerless blacks (you can plug in any minority you wish) myth will get a new lease on life to spend even more decades as the told history of the United States.

Moving on to another myth, let's look at a really old one: Sleeping Beauty. Now Disney took at shot at this story in 1957 and it was repeated as a musical in 1987 with director, David Irving. 

But I'm talking about the 2011 Sleeping Beauty I saw last week on the Sundance channel; the one which only got 5.3% on IMDb and was a rotten tomato at 49% at Rotten Tomatoes. What a loser!, you say and you may be right but it's also a movie which, if you are ready to "flow" with the myth, gives a very powerful message as food for thought.

Our Sleeping Beauty here is college student, Lucy (Emily Browning), who is practically sleep walking through life. She plays all her human interactions with stoic passivity even the one with the ill Birdman to whom she is obviously devoted.

In order to pay for college, Lucy takes and plods through a variety of jobs until she answers an ad in the college newspaper for one of the more bizarre employment positions ever legally advertised. She begins work as a scantily clad waitress at an exclusive men's club but soon is promoted to a more profitable position of a "sleeping beauty" for paying customers. But as she is assured and as all her men customers are warned: No penetration is allowed. 

I'm going to leave the plot there. What makes this movie so watchable is that the director, Julia Leigh, in her directorial debut, definitely had a POV to convey and with Browning she gets the perfect actress for her theme. While critics have complained about Lucy's almost catatonic walking through life, I think they miss the point: this is Sleeping Beauty as she really is. No music, no fanfare, no prince charming, just a young girl "sleeping" through the world. In previous movies, Beauty is unable to take control of her life (pricks her finger on the poisoned spindle and falls into a 100 year sleep); in this Sleeping Beauty, Lucy chooses not to control her life. In a bizarre turn of the prince-charming-as-savior motif, Leigh has no compunction in showing us the abuse women are subjected to by men when they live the SB myth.

Not for romantics, maybe not even for general audiences but Sleeping Beauty has a lot of say that should be heard. 

Wikipedia says that the NYT review of this movie called it "a pointed, deadpan surrealist sex farce that Luis Buñuel might have admired." Which leads me to Bunuel's Simon of the Desert. And, since my track record on The Exterminating Angel is so bad, I'll give this movie a short stand-alone review.

This 1965 film at 45 minutes (40 for US release - IMDb) is probably Bunuel's shortest flick (TEA ran 95 minutes) but everything is in it a la Bunuel: his disapproval of religious and social conventions. Simon, based on the legendary 5th-century Simeon Stylites who lived as an ascetic in a desert tower for almost 40 years, is always fighting Satan's allure because it seems Satan is tempting him in all his forms all the time.

We get brilliant touches like Simon's nonchalant walk from one tower to a nicer tower which his followers built for him or that the first gesture of the man whose hand Simon restores is to whack his kid. And then, just at that time when Bunuel likes repeating himself or bringing in the sheep, the film is over. I'm sure Bunuel was primed to say so much more but watch this movie because, big budget or not, a great director can take stones and make a witty soup.

See you next Monday.