20080627

FRIDAY

MERCURY

(excerpts)Tonight, I was feeling dark and moody so I decided to watch some DVDs that I’ve loaded up on a year ago—but never opened. One of them is LIFE’S A BITCH (AMORES PERROS) and the other is HEAVENLY CREATURES (which I’ve seen before, but purchased the Uncut version).

I was shocked at AMORES PERROS for two scenes I recognized were ripped off directly from Kieslowski’s trilogy: one scene was ripped off of BLANC (WHITE), where the homeless man in AMORES’ watched a funeral from afar with great amusemen.

The other additional scene (from AMORE’S) was ripped off from ROUGE (RED), when a two-story vinyl red advertisement was removed from the wall like a curtain.

Aside from that, AMORES’ attempted to do a trilogy of sorts—but rather than breaking the movie up; all the scenes were interwoven.

I knew immediately once I saw the car crash in the beginning of the film that it was heading backwards and we’d return to it again.The beginning and the ending of a film is always the hardest to do: because the first few images are usually a queue to a prophetic ending—and the last images of the film are often shamelessly obligatory and self-gratifying…like a “money shot” or selfish orgasm really.

HEAVENLY CREATURES has so many fantastic lines in it:

On Illness:
“Cheer up! All the best people have bad chest and bone diseases…it’s so frightfully romantic!”

On Heaven:
“I’m going to the Fourth world. It’s sort of like Heaven but better because there are no Christians there.”

On Gods and Idols:
“Orson Welles is the most hideous man alive!”

On Romantic Suffering:
“It would be wonderful if I could get Tuberculosis too!”

On Homophobia:
“Homosexuality—it can strike at anytime!”

On being Gothic:
“There is something desperately Exciting about bodies on stretchers!”

On Mother Complexes:
“Why could not mother die? Thousands of people die all the time?”

“Next time I write in this diary—mother will be dead. How odd.”

These lines cracked me up.

There is very little to complain about HEAVENLY CREATURES. It’s immaculate and is a type of film that should never be Redone…

However, I would love to do an Homage for it (but would not want to “redo” it). I’d love to bring those characters and scenes up-to-date with modern times. I would also show them as Lesbians (which I’m sure they were based on the True Story)–rather than dealing with Homeo-erotica in the cowardly way of Horror Films/Fantasy as Jackson did.

There were a few scenes that gave me terrible flashbacks. I realize that is a movie, but so much it resembled things that I went through—during my teenage years—as well as later in life.

There was a scene with the Father isolating and separating the two girls because he thought they were becoming lesbians. In this scene, the camera shows the two girls sleeping innocently together “like sisters” and tilts up to show the Father looking through an opened door at them. That was when he made the decision to separate them.

This actually happened to me when I was 17 years old, except my friend Alisha and I were not sexually involved with one another. We were extremely close and like HEAVENLY CREATURES we wrote each other obsessively, confiding everything in one another.

We were pen pals essentially and loved each other through Writing. We were both poets.

I finally had the chance to visit her in Topeka, Kansas—in this very strangely Austere and sheltered LEAVE IT TO BEAVER type of milieu. All the houses on every block were like mansions; very “Southern.”

One morning, I lied in bed with Alisha and she was still asleep. Her father cracked opened the door and I glanced up at him. He glanced at me and then at Alisha sleeping. I glanced at her and then back up at him.

In that single moment he had decided that this was wrong. The next evening, I was isolated and sent to sleep on a cot in the basement.

It was very humiliating and painful because our Friendship was entirely innocent. And Girls who are close friends, love sharing the bed together—that’s when you really bond. So when they separated us—I could tell that Alisha felt very bitter about it.

She absolutely HATED her Mother.

She also told me that her father, who was a college professor (just like in HEAVENLY CREATURES) was so “liberal and cool” and that I could be “out” (openly gay) with him and he wouldn’t judge me.

Turns out: he did.

The first time I saw HEAVENLY CREATURES was in Upstate New York when I used to own a cabin in the woods. My ex had seen the movie and suggested we watch it together.

The end scene showed how painful the permanent separation of the two girls was. I had a chilling premonition that made me feel deeply sad.

My ex was in the closet with her parents because her mother was neurotic and homophobic. I had a prophetic feeling while watching HEAVENLY CREATURES that my ex’s parents (especially her mother) would try to separate us. I

Three years later—that’s exactly what happened when her parents came to America and influenced her to come home. At that time, our relationship wasn’t so hot–but it was also the most opportune time for them to woo her back.

So my ex went back to Israel—to her parents. She didn’t even tell me…I had to ask her because she kept talking about “Israel” and stuff she was going to do there…Hinting.

It was a cruel and pathetically immature experience really; to be abandoned by someone you are so close to and though you knew so well. I have difficulty forgiving this type of behavior.

It was then that I woke to the reality of our times–and realized that the “Me” (selfish) generation is a real phenomena and that everyday people have Multiple Personalities; that Society is insane really….

So, I guess in many ways, you could say that I don’t really need to watch movies to escape or engage in any dramas.

HEAVENLY CREATURES clearly shows how Insane and Selfishly people love. No one is free of guilt on this matter; and no Love based on those premises is ever Justified.