1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 7: Bound

Before they became Lana and Lilly, the Wachowskis were Larry and Andy: the Wachowski Brothers, makers of The Matrix. And before they made The Matrix, they made Bound.

Bound has three great performances:

Gina Gershon’s performance as “Corky”;

Jennifer Tilly’s as “Violet”;

and, especially, Joe Pantoliano’s as “Caesar.”

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Corky has just served a five-year prison sentence. Her crime was “the redistribution of wealth” (her words). She takes a plumbing job and moves into a seedy apartment. On the other side of her paper-thin wall is a much fancier apartment inhabited by Caesar (a mobster) and Violet (his kept woman).

Violet is “bound” to Caesar, not only for her livelihood but also for her identity.

But then she makes eyes at Corky.

Caesar’s preoccupation with “the business” affords Violet and Corky plenty of time to lie in bed together and scheme. Violet wants to steal from the mob and allow Caesar to be blamed for it. This would enable her to break away from her miserable situation.

Only, Corky isn’t sold on the idea. Crossing the mob is dangerous, and she doesn’t yet trust Violet (it was a previous girlfriend who landed her in prison).

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“Bound,” the title, can mean several things. I think the most important meaning has to do with choosing whether to connect oneself to another person.

To trust or not to trust? That is this movie’s question.

Violet is ready to tie her fate to Corky’s, win or lose.

Caesar’s job doesn’t allow him to trust anyone. His paranoia poisons his allegiances and exacerbates his enmities. Paradoxically, it’s this inability to trust that makes him exploitable.

And then there’s Corky, the merely occasional lawbreaker. On the “trust” spectrum, she’s halfway between Violet and Caesar. She could maintain her independence and come out unscathed. Or she could go “all in” and bind herself to Violet.

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That’s the setup. It occupies roughly the first half of the movie and focuses on Violet and Corky.

There’s an over-the-top lustiness to Violet’s and Corky’s scheming. Although they have a noble objective – to “unbind” Violet from Caesar – they also scheme for the erotic thrill of it. Violet’s flirting is both saccharine and sardonic. Corky, bloodhound-like, lets her mouth hang open as if she’s trying to taste Violet’s true intentions.

Caesar is mostly offscreen so that Violet and Corky can stack the dominoes against him.

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Then, in the second half of the movie, the dominoes come tumbling down and Caesar takes the center stage. Violet and Corky have the upper hand; they’re the ones who’ve laid the traps. It’s up to Caesar to ingeniously dodge one calamity after another – first the anvil and then the grand piano, so to speak – without understanding who is dropping these things upon him.

As in Hitchcock’s Rope and Dial M for Murder, the action is confined to a single, well-furnished living space (Caesar’s and Violet’s apartment). This intensifies the feeling of being stifled. From time to time, the protagonists are obliged to hide damning clues just outside the view of the various mobsters and police who drop by. They also must behave politely for these visitors. To Caesar, this is especially onerous, since he despises his fellow mobsters and the law. It’s amusing to watch him grovel while, internally, he seethes.

Even so, we can’t help but admire him. Yes, he’s a vicious predator. Like Wile E. Coyote, though, he’s a tenacious and resourceful one.

If only he’d given Violet her due respect.

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P.S. For an interesting variation upon the “Caesar” character, see Joe Pantoliano’s performance in Risky Business (1983) as “Guido, the Killer Pimp.” In that movie, also, Pantoliano steals his scenes.

I take a day off

Well, Karin’s and Brianna’s mother has returned from abroad, and Brianna has gone back to her mother’s house.

Only, last night, Karin brought Brianna back to our apartment for a few hours. Brianna needed to use the Internet to do some homework. Her mother had turned off the Internet at their house so that Brianna might become more obedient.

Also, Brianna’s mother wanted her out of the house because she (the mother) felt unwell and needed to rest. (Never mind that Karin & I continue to feel unwell.)

As you may have gathered by now, Brianna is rather difficult. And so is her mother.

Before Brianna arrived last night, I’d had a restful day at home. I’d been scheduled to do jury service, but the trial was canceled. I watched Chariots of Fire and wept through most of it.

The man on the roof

Karin & I rested all of yesterday while Brianna and her friends roamed the streets. We’re still sick – Karin is sicker than I am – but not so sick that we can’t go to work or that Brianna can’t go to school.

I finished reading two other novels by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö (seven down, three to go). Afterward, I learned that in 1976, one of those novels, The Abominable Man, was cinematically adapted as Mannen på taket (The Man on the Roof). This movie is something of a classic. It’s said to have been stylistically influenced by The French Connection. And it’s got Sweden’s “signature” action sequence, in which a rifleman shoots at police helicopters from a rooftop.

Here’s a poster:

And here’s another:

The second poster shows my favorite policeman in the book series, the obnoxious Gunvald Larsson. He has a towel on his head because his scalp has been grazed by a bullet.

I’d very much like to see this movie, but I don’t know where to find a version with English subtitles.

The disaster artist

A rainstorm lashed South Bend yesterday afternoon. Karin filmed it:

Brianna walked away from school in it. She was like a drowned rat when she reached our dwelling (she’s staying with Karin & me while her mother is abroad). She took off her wet clothes, got into the bath, and pulled the curtain rod down upon herself. She lay under the curtain in the bath.

(I know all these details because she “texted” them to Karin while she was in the bath.)

She already had a cold before the rainstorm caught her. I’d been wary of contracting it (we make our lunches with the same processed chicken slices). Now, Brianna’s cold is worse, and it’s Karin who’s got the sniffles.

Update: Saturday, September 22

Tonight, Karin is flat-out sick. Certain congestive sensations in my chest do not bode well for me, either. We’ve decided to stay home from church tomorrow.

Brianna put twice the requisite amount of soap inside a washing machine. This prolonged the wash cycle’s “rinse” phase, which generated extra water and flooded our building’s laundry room.

I’ve decided to call her memoir – should I ever write it – No Thanks to Herp Derp.

1 Nephi 4

Our new Mormon neighbors, Elders Johnathon and Richard, have been receiving our letters in their mailbox, and we’ve been receiving theirs. (It’s because the word “Elder” resembles our last name.)

We continue to be on excellent terms with these missionaries. Elder Johnathon invited me to be his Facebook friend. Most of his photos are from high school, which he recently completed. He appears to have been a member of a highly successful dance team.

I’ve now read several chapters of the first book of Nephi. My favorite so far is chapter 4, in which Nephi decapitates Laban, who is lying drunkenly on the ground. Nephi then dresses in Laban’s garments, bluffs his way into Laban’s treasury, and carries away some brass plates upon which the Lord’s commandments are engraved. However, Nephi’s own brothers, Laman, Lemuel, and Sam, fail to recognize him because he is wearing Laban’s clothes.

The narrative is rapid and suspenseful, and one gets used to the linguistic quirks.

I’ve also learned, from the introduction to my “reader’s edition,” that these quirks are entirely attributable to Joseph Smith. Mormons regard his translations as fallible. In this respect, the Book of Mormon differs from, say, the Quran, whose every Arabic word is presumed to be Allah’s own.

When I first met Johnathon and Richard, I told them that although I’d be willing to read the Book of Mormon with them, I was unlikely to ever become a Latter-Day Saint, and I didn’t want to waste their time. “That’s all right,” Johnathon told me. “Our goal is for you to grow closer to Christ.”

I thought that was a pretty good answer.

September’s poem

“To Autumn”:

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Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, / Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; / Conspiring with him how to load and bless / With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; / To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, / And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; / To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells / With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, / And still more, later flowers for the bees, / Until they think warm days will never cease, / For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? / Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find / Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, / Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; / Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep, / Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook / Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers: / And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep / Steady thy laden head across a brook; / Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, / Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they? / Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, – / While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, / And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; / Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn / Among the river sallows, borne aloft / Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; / And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; / Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft / The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; / And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

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(John Keats)

I am mistaken for a chemistry tutor

Tonight, Karin met a friendly, stray tomcat who piteously mewed. She brought him food and stroked him.

It’s sad, knowing we’ve reached our limit as far as pet adopting goes.

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IU’s tutoring program has expanded into some of the local secondary schools. Today, I met the eighth-grader whom I am expected to tutor all semester, four hours each week.

Our first subject was science. I explained the distinction between physical and chemical changes. The cutting of bread involves a merely physical change; when the bread is digested or burned, the change is chemical.

This was a topic I hadn’t thought about in the last twenty years.

A college student sat at a nearby table, listening intently to us. He must be one of the chemistry tutors, I thought. I hope I’m doing justice to his subject.

Then he got up and walked over to our table. He showed me a sheet of paper on which he’d made complicated drawings. “Will you help me to understand these ionic bonds?” he asked.

I told him how he could find a real chemistry tutor.

My eighth-grade tutee and I then discussed the poetic techniques of metaphor, simile, and alliteration, and she wrote an alliterative poem of two short stanzas.

Fictitious history

The air has cooled, what with the arrival of September; and our finances, while tight, are being loosed ever so slightly. This last week, I even bought a new book – The Glory of the Empire by Jean D’Ormesson – the “history” of a fictitious realm.

There is a whiff of Tacitus in its first paragraph:

The Empire never knew peace. First it had to be built, then defended. From the depths of its history there arose the clang of axes, the hiss of javelins, the cries of dying at evening after battle. Neither the forests to the north and east nor the high mountains in the south were proof against attack and invasion. In the great fertile plains at the foot of the volcanoes, massacre succeeded massacre. To the west, the sea too brought its share of dangers: suddenly threatening sails, pirates, surprise assaults at dawn. On the Empire’s borders night never came without its escorts of dread and death. Even within, both in the country and in the towns, interest and passion raised up rival bands to fight for power with violence and arson. The Empire grew up on a foundation of flames and blood. … And peril came not only from men. Unbridled nature exacted a high price … Imagination hardly needed to improve on the horrors of the real.

(The last sentence is like when Agatha Christie has her characters say: “This murder is as shocking as a detective novel, but this is real life.”)

D’Ormesson is commenting on historiography’s patterns and pitfalls. Is there any other sustained work that does so by way of recording the “history” of an imaginary yet this-worldly realm? Le Guin’s Orsinia, perhaps? I’d be grateful to be told.

Yahoo! trolls the world

There’s a tradition in U.S. soccer journalism of importing awful British pundits. Several of these donkeys have worked for Yahoo! Sports.

When I first moved to this country, I was delighted with Yahoo! for re-publishing other news agencies’ reports from all over the world. Every day, I’d read of the domestic leagues in Botswana or Thailand or wherever. Coverage of South America was especially good.

All of that fine reporting is long gone. Now, Yahoo!’s content is much narrower in scope, and the site employs its own journalists. These pundits have tended to sing the praises of (a) the English Premier League, (b) the U.S. men’s team, (c) the English men’s team, (d) Cristiano Ronaldo, (e) the other powerful European leagues and teams (France’s, Germany’s, Italy’s, and Spain’s), and (f) U.S. Major League Soccer – more or less in that order. Presumably, these are the topics that U.S. readers care about.

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For years, the especial jackass at Yahoo! was one Martin Rogers, who’s moved on to USA Today. How I loathed that “bloke.” … But now, I wonder if Ryan Bailey, the “wanker” du jour, is even worse.

First, Bailey doesn’t write. He makes videos. (Rogers would at least write his columns.)

Second, the videos are obnoxious, due to Bailey’s relentless cheerfulness.

Third, Bailey doesn’t just wish to preserve the status quo; he favors giving dramatically more power to the most mercenary entities.

See, for example, his recent video, “Making the Case to Scrap International Soccer.”

This is his case:

(1) International soccer sometimes conflicts with the Premier League.

(2) And the Premier League is obviously what everyone wants to view.

(3) Besides, we don’t have to scrap international soccer completely. If we were to keep soccer as an Olympic event, that would be good enough.

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This cannot be a serious argument. No one who isn’t already on Bailey’s side would be convinced. Bailey must be trolling.

But if Bailey is serious, he obviously hasn’t watched the South American World Cup qualifiers. If his idea of a good game is Brighton vs. Newcastle or Arsenal vs. Chelsea, he should try watching Uruguay vs. Chile, or Chile vs. Paraguay, or, least glamorous of all, Paraguay vs. Venezuela. (In the 2018 World Cup cycle, each of those South American fixtures turned out to be a matter of life and death.)

As for moving soccer’s main event to the Olympics: either the Olympics would have to be greatly expanded to accommodate a soccer tourney with the magnitude of the World Cup, or else the world’s main soccer tourney would have to be shrunk. The first option would leave in place all of what Bailey dislikes about the current system (including, I presume, the massive qualification phase). And the second option would fail to placate those who like having a big tourney and its attendant qualification games.

One suspects that the real motive for incorporating the world’s main soccer tourney into the Olympics would be to allow U.S. fans to feel better about themselves, since their country would likely excel in many other events. (“We didn’t reach the podium in soccer? Well, at least we earned the gold in beach volleyball.”)

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Bailey also states that players prefer to focus on their clubs and not their national teams.

To which every South American replies: You must be from England.

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Even so, I probably am more disillusioned with international soccer than I ever have been. This latest World Cup left me especially discouraged. I worry that international soccer will always be unjust – and not only contingently so; I worry that people’s valuation of it is conceptually confused.

I may discuss these issues further during the next several months.

Good deeds and injuries

Karin took this selfie when she helped to build the Habitat for Humanity house.

And this link is to a copyrighted photo of some volunteers. You can easily recognize Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter. Garth Brooks, the singer, is the only worker wearing a dark blue shirt.

Karin is in the second-backmost row, the fourth person from the left.

Unfortunately, when she came home, she was badly sunburnt.

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I also am injured. Chopping an onion last night, I nicked open a fingertip; this morning, while showering, I reopened the wound. This minor injury has been amazingly bloody.

Karin has been looking after me, and so has Mary, who quit teaching high school English to become a nurse-in-training.