“Into Thin Air” by Jon Krakauer

Into Thin Air recounts the details of an ascent on the main summit of Mt.Everest back in 1996 which ultimately lead to the deaths of a number of amateur climbers and their expedition leaders. Krakauer, the author, was one of the party who happened to be there on the scene of the tragedy (in contrast to his other famous work, Into the Wild).

The book asks all the questions which one would expect in the aftermath of unexpected and tragic death: what exactly happened, who is to blame, why were we so surprised in the wake? The answers to all these kept me feverishly reading, despite the unpoetic prose and the obvious trajectory of the account. However, there is much to appreciate in this engrossing work.

Krakauer powerfully raises many morbid aspects within the human male. His deep insecurity and need for affirmation. His absurd desire for danger and trouble all his days. It just serves to remind one the extent to which the human male will continue to be a ripe specimen for examination. And Krakauer puts us all under the microscope.

Sydney’s Downtown Lights

The neons and the cigarettes

Rented rooms and rented cars

The crowded streets, the empty bars

Chimney tops and trumpets

The golden lights, the loving prayers

The coloured shoes, the empty trains

I’m tired of crying on the stairs

Future Islands – Give us the wind

Future Islands are a Baltimore band.

They are what I imagine Joy Division would have gone on to sound like if Ian Curtis hadn’t tragically topped himself.

They do melancholy electro beautifully, also adding a danceable beat and a sonic richness to the whole dealio.

This track is off their 2011 album, On the Water. Thanks Jess and Jared.

Music & series tv: Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes, Sopranos

The last couple of weeks I have managed to devour five seasons of series television: both seasons of the BBC’s Life on Mars? and all three of the sequel, Ashes to Ashes. To watch episode after episode in the evening hours brings a certain rhythm to one’s holidays which is both nicely relaxing and fosters expectancy for another night-time fix. I recommend both shows (the UK versions) for some not too demanding yet intelligent television viewing.

This patch of couch grazing has me thinking about the use of popular song in series television. Both these shows use music in quite central ways. The premise is integral to the songs; the main character finds themself inexplicably thrown back in time where retro cool can be mined for all its worth (Life on Mars? is set in the 70s and Ashes to Ashes in the 80s). In some ways the music is more important than the plot lines and the development of themes. Both shows do however accomplish something highly effective – the fashioning of instant nostalgia. While every other ingredient in a production may be lacking (which on occasion is the case for these two shows!), the music can still manage to lay down meaning for and elicit emotion from the viewer, via our attachment to the song. And in so doing, we have another memory or visual image tied to these ditties. I remember our heroine freed from near-death in a cold room to Ultravox’s “Vienna”. An intimate dance moment made uber-romantic with the added strains of “True” by Spandau Ballet. The thumpingly rhythmic synths of “Baba O’Reilly” heralds a new fissure in the space-time continuum.

However, The Sopranos (the greatest ever dramatic television show?), uses the tone and lyrics of a song in more profoundly moving ways. Nor does one ever feel over-stimulated by the soundtrack, nor is it utilised to hide a lack in the story or characters. However, Don’t Stop Believing by Journey, used in the final episode of the show, can bring me close to tears. The song for me is now forever caught up in the creation and life of the show’s characters and their ultimate fate. Only in two key moments of Life on Mars? and Ashes to Ashes is something similar accomplished; I don’t think I will ever listen to David Bowie’s “Life on Mars” or “Ashes to Ashes” in the same way again!

Nevertheless, all three shows have underlined the power of popular songs. They remind us of times and places, sights and smells, sadnesses and joys. They are such a strong force in our emotional lives.

Arcade Fire – Sprawl II (Mountains beyond Mountains)

This is the best Arcade clip since their first album landed. Interesting, evocative and beautiful.

Ryan Gosling in Drive (2011)

Drive is an extended advertisement for a particular form of masculinity; a product from another time and place. The mysterious hero, named only Driver, is a character mashup – he is Charlie Bronson’s vengeful fist blended with Sam Peckinpah’s bloodied and tragic anti-heroes.

Ryan Gosling shows his acting versatility once again. He is gallant and cool; he doesn’t end up with the girl, because in the end he would just be too dangerous. This is the film tailor made to enable men to fall in love with the attractive Gosling.

There is so much to dislike about this movie. It’s thoroughly artificial; utterly contrived in almost every aspect of the production (plotting, characters, themes). The music thumps and chews away, reminding the viewer this is an exercise in pure style. The story is wafer-thin, giving enough texture and pseudo-emotion to create the form of a world, but scarcely enough to fill it with substance and meaning. It’s made to be experienced rather than reflected upon.

There’s some absolute zingers of artifice to be enjoyed here. Albert Brooks’ sinister Bernie keeps a collection of jewelled daggers in a display case purely in order to shows us the depths of his evil – he slays good people in his spare time. And Ryan Gosling’s Driver has all the accesories for the real man. He dons a jacket akin to those worn by the neaderthalish Cobra group in Karate Kid; this one has dried blood mashed into its metallic sheen. His macho quota is multiplied whenever he chews on a toothpick, which happens to be for most of the film.

Nevertheless, despite all these things, and more, Drive is highly effective and impressive. It was hard not to be moved by its style, its sense of tragedy and its honour code. As Ryan Gosling’s Driver still moves off into the night, even now, I begin to wonder what this accomplished actor will do next.

Words better read than spoken

apoplectic

fecundity

dormant

Sex in movies before the 1970s: Exploitation and Exploration

Films haven’t always been obsessed with sex and its mechanics. In fact, before the pornographic film industry exploded, sexuality was a reality veiled or left unexplored on celluloid.

Before the 1970s, films portrayed sex in two major streams.

In the B-grade picture world – the drive-ins and the midnight movie theatres – exploitation was the dominant methodology. Here in a world driven by excessive gore (cannibalism in Blood Feast) and bizarre sexuality (transgenderism in Glen or Glenda), the sight of bare flesh was seen as an added bonus for patrons. If they were lucky, the director even managed to coax an intimate scene out of the actors. These films exploited nudity and sex for the sake of an audience hungry for sensationalism and something “new”.

However, in the midst of this perverse and questionable subculture, many directors were exploring sex in intelligent yet provocative ways.

Scenes of physical intimacy in 60s cinema had become a vehicle for deeper portrayals of human eroticism and personal drive.  Sex was no longer something to be viewed independent of the emotional and physical person; the human was seen to be a wholistic creation. One example of this was within Luis Bunuel’s “Belle de Jour”. A woman is placed in centre-stage (played by Catherine Deneuve), whose empty, passionless matrimony has led her to seek fulfilment as a prostitute. It was both a goad to a potentially prudish public, and a questioning voice against sexless marriages.

However, no director placed the microscope over the complexity and messiness of our sexual lives like Michaelangelo Antonioni. In his early masterpiece, “L’Avventura” (pictured below), sex becomes one of the major diagonostic tools for understanding his characters’ drives and desires. Ultimately, what is uncovered in the lives of the rich, by their hunger for physical intimacy, is a troubling spiritual malaise and yearning for deeper fulfilment. The coda to his oblique “L’Eclisse” merely serves to deepen this questioning of human behaviour. Sadly Antonioni would abandon these careful explorations of sexuality for a more fashionable and superficial tone in later films (Blow Up).

Like his fellow Italian, Federico Fellini sought to interrogate the upper class and their meaningless search for happiness through sex in “La Dolce Vita” (The Sweet Life). He loads the frame with visual stimulus and asks us in the audience, “isn’t this what you want as well?”, while simultaneously showing us the empty outcome of these things. While it lacks the intellectual rigour and surgical analysis of Antonioni, it still raises an empathetic yet interrogative voice to the viewer.

Both Antonioni and Fellini managed to do all this without explicitly filming a ‘scene’ between his performers. Rather, everything was in the realm of suggestion.

However, it would be films like “Blow Up”, “The Graduate” and the never-ending proliferation of James Bond titles which would provide an omen of things to come. Here the intimate act was merely a commodity to be used up without concern; sex and nudity were administered as a stimulant for a bored and anesthetised audience. Nevertheless, a minority of films would travel upon the intelligent and sometimes responsible path which had begun to be paved.

Christmas reading

Reading books over the festive season seems to take on a very different character from the rest of the year – pages turn at far greater frequencies than normal. The narrative lives of others looms larger and more impressively than our own as we rest, perhaps with moribund languidity, in the bosom of our families. The real and fictional happenings of other, more interesting lives, have a way of filling our minds to almost obsessive proportions, in contrast to the sanitised nature of our own.

I remember as a twelve year old boy, wide-eyed and with considerable fear, reading sizeable chucks of Steven King’s “It” on the eve of Christmas Day. This time around, twenty years later, it was a very different nightmare. A friend lent me their copy of “Into Thin Air” by Jon Krakauer; a personal account of the Mt. Everest disaster of 1996. Suffice to say it is finished and I await Christmas 2012, when my next book will be voraciously read and wept over.

What were you reading this Christmas gone?

The Pale Ale

This has become my new love of 2011. There is an exceptional range of brews within this seemingly no-thrills style.

They’re brewed largely from pale malts and present with a distinct hoppiness. Most people in Australia associate this style with the Cooper’s green beer, though this has few of the distinctive elements one should expect: strong hops, punchy fruit flavours and a tangy finish. Little Creatures has created a better exemplar with their lynchee infested Pale Ale.

However, it is the India Pale Ale which is currently flooding the boutique beer market. The IPA reared its ugly head back in the nineteenth century when the English had a major colony on the sub-continent. The brew became popular with the East India Company because it could handle the less than desirable conditions for sea travel and was in synch with drinkers living in a warmer climate.

Today a number of brewing houses create highly refined and complex IPAs. Many even concoct imperial examples within the style. Surprising for this drinker at least, the high alcohol content is an ideal bed-fellow for the strong hop flavours and bold tangyness. Brewdog (a Scottish brewery) produces the Hardcore IPA, which is my pick of an exceptional bunch. It is 9.2% and has a creamy passionfruit finish. It is a revelation. However, not to be outdone, Mikeller has a coffee IPA which goes down very nicely as well.