51/50, Aftermaths Up The Creek

It did not appear to be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at the center of the bridge; they merely blockaded the two ends of the foot planking that traversed it.-- Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

Even with repeated viewings, a film such as Jacob’s Ladder opens with too ponderous and heavy a thud. It is neither a fair representation of the Vietnam experience—most films aren’t—although a vehicle like Rolling Thunder (77) excavates a POW’s psychic duress with devastating impact—nor a fair representation of horror merged in synchronization with its back story. Yes, Danny Aiello provides us with an epigram from Meister Eckhart as a justification for the demonic sequences towards the angelic sensibility of reunification, but Lyne’s direction has too many incongruities to be a good afterlife experience, indicting the Department of Defense through a metaphysical backlash rather than thorough investigation. Why a dying medic dreams himself through a wife and mistress as a postal employee with a deceased Dr. Carson at a veteran’s clinic is anyone’s guess. There are better films out there to touch upon the transcendent, including Vanilla Sky.  At the very least, the writer we have to thank for this enduring template, Ambrose Bierce, manages a seamless tale with An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge, in contrast to Lyne’s camera transitions. Politically, the Civil War emasculated Bierce; stylistically, he is too translucent for my taste, akin to Edgar Allan Poe on methadone, but every writer builds up to the point where we, writers, have the breakout moment of our best pieces, and one sees this in Owl Creek, which resonated with me too upon the obligatory anthology reading. In other words, in an eagerness to relax and actually use the data I’m paying for, I unwittingly selected a film bad enough to have been syndicated numerous times. I may feel that Lyne is a pretentious Carpenter rip off, and feel some pity for the aspirations of Bill Rubin’s original script, but ironically, something clicked in yet this latest perusal of a Tim Robbins’ youthful performance.

His niche, to the extent he has one, is to play the man with whom we identify who is out of his depth. It is evident even in the neo-vigilante apologia narrative of Mystic River, in which Sean Penn fabulously murders the wrong culprit, and it is more than blatantly obvious in Code 23, one of my speculative favorites. Even in Majorie Prime, where the holograms and the human actors alike are dependent on his character, the only one not recreated as a synthetic personality, he is still out of his depth against computer science turning life experience into unwitting travesty. Perhaps, if we pause long enough, it won’t amount to the best we can offer the future.

Kingdoms Come

Self-interest is a rather condemning insulator. The children of celebrities either survive through imitation, like Ivanka Trump, or die in a drug overdose while in a grotesque imitation, like Bobbi Brown. I just remembered my pitch about Bobbi, and would probably have to hold my nose and open a Facebook account to get at my sources. I have no desire to get penalized and banned on the social networking giant, none, whatsoever, but like Ann Coulter, I may have to succumb, at least as a practical matter, but for the life of me can only barely fathom why Peck's son checked himself out. I am starving to death, doomed, spent a life long battle believing what liberals spoon fed me about success and disability, and the obituaries hang little pork chops on a string. Jonathan committed suicide, because of, or despite Father Chisholm's insufferable stridency? In Old Gringo, nearly one of Peck's last supporting roles, the actor mitigates his infallible conviction, since he is portraying Bierce, middlebrow hack, whose legacy mine might one day be reasonably compared to, but it was distasteful, badly done. We're used to the striated laces with which the old lion roars

Though I am not fully ready to take aim at Hollywood and Catholic pageantry, Peck's priggishness is another matter, and as old as Gentleman's Agreement is, I rooted for the realists, thank you very much, though I have never used "kike" as an epithet. I have no idea what it means. For its time, the 47 film was more honest than it had to be, but this was due to the war. Too many Europeans died in that conflict, in addition to the 6 million in the camps. Chisholm was aged, at the end of The Keys to the Kingdom, with its adamant lessons about tolerance and hypocrites, (I had forgotten Vincent Price and he was a breath of fresh air) to look like a Scottish saint. Compare this to his devil may care countenance in 89, against Fonda and Smitts. The elderly, eventually, are drawn to caviler libertarian defiance, even Peck, who probably would have been sworn into office by acclamation, if he had given his handlers the go. It is so much more convenient, merging celebrity and monarchy. The early 20th century Edwardians knew it, or Gambon had some fun with it, if the story of Elizabeth's father has any genealogical accuracy.