Washington Square, Winter
André Kertész
American, 1954
Gelatin silver print
The J. Paul Getty Museum
First snow of the year, how thick with memories are you to look upon! Past experiences fling themselves to earth along with you. The face of one’s father and mother and siblings emerge distinctly and meaningfully from your wet, white veils.
— Robert Walser
Wherein lies happiness? In that which becks
Our ready mind to fellowship divine,
A fellowship with essence; till we shine,
Full alchemiz’d, and free of space.
— John Keats
1.) Greenburg I just loved this movie, though I know plenty of people who didn’t. To me it’s the closest thing to an American Bergman or Antonioni without being pretentious in the slightest. It’s also a kind of tragic-comic elegy for a certain brand of cool that was in effect from my childhood until, well, not that long ago.
2.) Please Give Another amazing movie that nails the fabric of modern life to the wall, of what it’s like to be old, middle aged and young in America these days. Great acting and understated direction. This is what indie flicks should be.
3.) Black Swan Just saw this. Amazing, audacious, expressionistic, surreal, beautiful, operatic and a bunch of other adjectives. Darren Aronofsky is one of the few auteurs left standing and he’s absolutely fearless. This is among the great dance flicks of all time but is also a discerning look at the artistic life and process.
4.) Toy Story III Kind of a sad commentary on modern culture that the most humane, moving and deeply, unironically affecting movie this year was a computer animated one about a bunch of toys. But it was.
5.) The Social Network Another penetrating look at an important part of contemporary life that didn’t exist that long ago. Some people saw a hero and some a jerk in Jesse Eisenberg’s brilliant performance in a very well written script.
6.) Catfish This maybe documentary makes a great companion piece to the preceding as it explores the less glamorous, more ambiguous side of the internet as well as the strange new forms of creativity and even identity springing up there.
7.) Inception Mind blowing visuals, an interesting conception and a star turn by Leo. I have to applaud the scope and ambition but for me the deeper resonance wasn’t completely there.
8.) Tiny Furniture Another thoroughly contemporary effort, an examination of over-documented life that’s become indistinguishable from a reality show. Ever prescient Any Warhol said that knowing at all times that they might be filmed causes people to act in a different more dramatic yet more ironic way, which is pretty much where this movie lives. But yet there’s an acutely intelligent and most of all funny consciousness shaping it all, (except for the ending which kind of poops out).
9.) Little Rose I had to pick at least one obscure foreign film. I saw this at the Polish Film festival here and it was really pretty good, with a talented cast whose names not only had I never heard of but couldn’t even pronounce. Sexy, savvy and intelligent it also looks better when I think of how most American film makers would cheese up this story of a political system in which everybody loses.
10.) The King’s Speech Yeah, it’s like an extended Masterpiece Theater production and we’re asked to feel for the problems of royalty. But the acting is spot on and the writing and look are anything but boring. Like much good English art it’s very much about the social system with a lot of sly comedy.
I haven’t yet seen Winter’s Bone, True Grit or Somewhere, a trio of films that I suspect might muscle their way on here, but for what it’s worth there’s my ten, lucky reader.
Her pearl round ears, white neck, and orbed brow;
The which were blended in, I know not how,
With such a paradise of lips and eyes,
Blush-tinted cheeks, half smiles and faintest sighs,
That, when I think thereon, my spirit clings
And plays about its fancy, till the stings
Of human neighborhood envenom all.
— John Keats
And after Desiree had ordered her hair she loosened her belt and laid it on the couch. In a few seconds her robe had dropped to the sand and she rose from the floods of dark purple, from the foam of fine rustling silk, smiling quietly, and totally naked. Then she picked many of the yucca blossoms, pressed them with both hands between her breasts and waded through the narrow stream to the statue of Pan, laying the light green chalices upon the high pedestal. She stood for a moment, the rosy splendor of her limbs displayed against the marble pallor of the stone.
Sebastian had never seen anything like it, neither in life nor in his most secret dreams: it was also the first time that she had ever danced in front of him. It could, in fact, hardly be called a dance, for her whole body seemed to dissolve into movement as the colors flowed one into the other. The gleam of her eyes, the wave of her hair, an expression on her lips – these were the only human entities. But even these had to surrender their corporeal essence to the mysterious bond which, separate and independent, pulsed between dancer and spectator and whose name was: burning soul.
— Arthur Holitscher
