Far North

Every so often a film comes along that moves and challenges me; a film that haunts my dreams and thoughts for days afterwards.  Far North is such a film.  I watched it Saturday afternoon after watching Apocalypto on Friday night, so I figured I was pretty hardened to violence, but I have to tell you that this movie has some scenes that are not for the squeamish. But it is worth your discomfort.  It is thought provoking - it will make you consider violence and its relationship to beauty.  It will challenge you to consider the price of living in a community and the cost of renouncing others.  It is a tragedy that you can see coming from the very beginning, but I will guarantee you that unless you already know, you cannot guess the ending.  It is a film that is as intimate as Once and as expansive as Lawrence of Arabia or, better , Dr. Zhavago.  I watched it alone, but I wish Dawn had watched it with me.  This ain't no date movie, but it is about men and women. It is a film that some consider misogynic, but was based on a short story written by a woman and the strongest characters are both women.  Beauty and violence - natural and human - are the themes here.  What are we capable of doing for love, or in spite of it? Which is worse, the cruelty of humans or the hostile  indifference of nature?

Here is the trailer:

I posted a review on Netflix in which I compared the movie to a fairy tale and it is a fairy tale, but not in a Disneyfied way, but in a Brothers Grimm, death and dismemberment, what-to-hell-is-my-unconscious-trying-to-tell-me? kind of way.  It is as stripped bare and elemental as snow under the Northern Lights. . . . and as unforgiving as snow at -50 degrees.  It is hard to determine where exactly the story takes place or when.  It is a little like being lost on the tundra or at sea.  Please don't go read the reviews, since the ones who rate it highly have it right, but the one 's who rate it one star are f*&^tards who obviously didn't begin to understand what the film was all about.  And there is a serious spoiler in one of the reviews.

_____________________________________________________________

After you have seen this movie, come back and listen to this interview with the Director, Asif Kapadia. then Google the title for more info.

Rainer Maria Rilke

This week's poem is very short. It is from Rainer Maria Rilke and is translated in the book, Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties, by John J.L. Mood. I bought the book on October 10, 1980 according to the flyleaf, but I had been reading Rilke all thorough college, beginning with Letters to a Young Poet. I remember that this short passage had great impact on me in those post graduation years as the group of college friends I was so close to began to drift apart.

Irgendwo blüht die Blume des Abschieds und streut

immerfort Blütenstaub, den wir atmen, herüber;

auch noch im kommendsten wind atmen wir Abschied.

Somewhere blooms the blossom of parting and bestrews

evermore over us pollen which we breathe:

even in the most-coming wind we breathe parting.

October, 1924