links/2023w05

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TÁR (Field, 2022)

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(Written and directed by Todd Field; starring Cate Blanchett, Noémie Merlant, Nina Hoss, Sophie Kauer, Julian Glover, Allan Corduner, and Mark Strong. Released 07 October 2022; watched: 2023w05 via Peacock).

Cate Blanchett in TÁR, on black, smoke coming out of her mouth

Given my creative history in the world of classical music, a world for which I hold both such utter love (the output) and utter contempt (the milieux) – fairly or otherwise – that Field and Blanchett capture with such startling accuracy, writing about TÁR with any objectivity has been a challenge: experiencing the film triggered more than a little bit of heretofore unknown and seemingly unresolved PTSD from my music school / conservatory days – none of it having anything to do with the film's overarching subject matter, but rather the onslaught of a creative doubt that I haven't felt since I ran away from the hallowed caocophy of institutionalized music education 20 years ago.

(It's not often that I can write the following words so I'm going to write them here, because they sum up the entirety of my music school experience: I should've listened to Branford Marsalis.)

Nonetheless, objectivity: Cate Blanchett is mesmerizing – as if she ever isn't – in a career-best performance in a career of career-best performances, thanks in no small part to the inspired writing (the pace and tone and subject matter brought to mind John Patrick Shanley's DOUBT) and directing of Field (I want to say he needs to make more films, but if we get a film like TÁR 16 years after the remarkable LITTLE CHILDREN, he can take as much time as he needs) and supporting players, especially Nina Hoss and Noémie Merlant – and a welcome small part from Julian Glover.

The thing that sticks with me, the thing I'm drawing into my own work, though, is Field's deft handling and rhythmic manipulation of the smallest elements into the most unmooring reverberations: a masterclass in the value of (hyper)vigilant attention to detail.

running to stay vertical (out of spite)

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A year and a half after blowing out my back (stupidly) carrying a standup freezer by myself down uneven-at-best basement stairs (I was pissed about something stupid and refused all help which was, say it with me, fucking stupid), I've managed to get myself back into a daily running routine. Aiming, by late Spring, to get back to my six-miles-a-day (I'm currently doing half that).

Why six miles, you ask? Simple, really: spite.

In Haruki Murakami's WHAT I TALK ABOUT WHEN I TALK ABOUT RUNNING, he said that he ran six miles a day six days a week. Loved that book, but HATED his 1Q84 follow-up, COLORLESS SOMETHING SOMETHING AND THE SOMETHING SOMETHING (I only remember the first word of the title), so I decided I would do six miles a day, seven days a week, as a middle finger for writing that shitty book (IMO, 1Q84 is the last great – or even readable – thing Murakami wrote).

So long as I don't blow my back out again, I should be on track to get back to the six and continue my reign of spite-running two years after the herniation. Hopefully this will shut my doctors and father-in-law up about my weight gain over the last couple of years.

TITUS GROAN (Peake, 1946)

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Thanks to his sublime cadence, his intricate and labyrinthine use of limited locations, and deeply-drawn characters, Peake managed the heretofore impossible with the first of his Gormenghast novels: crafted a fantasy series that I'm itching to read every bit of.

As I've also been reading Alan Moore's (or, rather, "The Original Writer") run on MIRACLEMAN, the influence of Peake on Moore is even more apparent – indeed, I think it was this article that pushed me to check out Peake’s work as Moore’s description intrigued me):

The young Moore tore through Edgar Rice Burroughs, Edgar Allan Poe, Ray Bradbury, HP Lovecraft and, especially, Mervyn Peake. The Gormenghast novels, he says, “were probably the first books where I began to understand just what you could do with writing: how he could conjure this entire complex environment and these almost fluorescent characters that stayed in your mind for ever”.

To be certain, Peake's wonderful, "fluorescent," characters will stay with me, friends for life; a delight. My complete reading list, from 2013 to the present, lives here.

SitRep: MainFictionThing

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The good news: I still like everything I wrote nearly a year ago. The bad: I've been trying to figure out the next bit since then. If nothing else, I know that what's there isn't all there is – I've got plenty laid out around it, though I'm in the midst of another narrative case of South Park's Underpants Gnomes (phase one = collect underpants, phase two =..., phase three = profit / section one = works, section two = ..., section three = works). I sometimes wish that the sentences and rhythms and constructions and permutations that sounded good to me didn't sound good to me; it'd make things so much easier. Alas.