Virtually Magnificent

It's been like, three months since I've seen it. Which means another revisit to....

Scott and Tessa's 2009-2010 free dance, performed to Mahler's Symphony No. 5 (Adagietto).

To further assure us of their shittiness, NBC not only censored all other website hosting the Olympic videos, but took aforementioned videos off, replacing them with silly "ARE YOU READY" promos of London 2012. As if anyone actually cares about London 2012 yet!

So I had to refer to the non-Olympic performances, all of which are spectacular even if they don't quite measure up to the simply inimitable magic of the Vancouver version. One of my favorites is the Mahler at Skate Canada, because the camera is close-up, giving the audience a larger scope of their faces and Scott's wonderful physical charisma. The Skate Canada version is also not as refined, which in my opinion allows the spirit of the dance to come through - Scott and Tessa are literally quite breathless in their duo of timeless love.

"Exhaling a long, sensual breath across the ice" - the New York Times loves them too.

As I've noticed in their other dances, the choreography never quite holds up in the middle, probably because Scott and Tessa have to insert all those foot-sequences, or whatever those dancing requirements are called, but the ending lifts - the ending itself - are flawless.

Scott is pretty emotionally overwhelmed at the end, as he always is for the Mahler - it's a bit embarrassing, almost like catching him with his pants down, because in interviews he comes across as your regular charming jock - mischievous and wry and boyish, incorrigibly mugging the camera as Tessa looks on like a fondly older sister. But as fellow skater Ben Agosto said of Scott, he's a fantastic actor. On the ice he slips into a different mode of character, imbuing the persona of whoever he's supposed to be in the dance. And Tessa's just...Tessa, her mood as unfaltering as her routine. The only time I've seen her let go was during the Umbrellas of Cherbourg dance at Worlds, which led a few people to conclude that she and Scott were dating at the time, otherwise she would have never looked "so in love". To which I can only think, unlikely, but I hope so.

Mahler at the "Grand Prix" - smoother, better quality (both dance-wise and video-wise) but more dazzling?

P.S. Unrelated and tangential, though somewhat figure-skating related. I just got into a fight on youtube with someone who said that everyone who thinks the lovely and talented Johnny Weir is gay is just stereotyping and "labeling". ARE YOU FUCKING WITH ME? This is in the same exact category as the time when I came across someone on IMDB who spent about twenty pages of a thread trying to convince people that Orlando Bloom was the best actor of his generation.

Thoughts on Bright Star

Is is better to have loved and lost than have never loved at all?



That's something I'd like to ask Fanny Brawne, who managed to move on after Keats' death and have her own family without him. The end notes would have you believing that Fanny, like Arwen from LOTR, wandered the frozen woods in eternal sorrow while draped in black and muttering lines from his poems. In a way, Jane Campion's new movie is a very idealistic view at love. But my severity aside, it's still a rapturous, beautiful ode to first love, quite different and similar from "The Piano" in many ways. There are certain elements in common, like the funny little girl, or the relationship between the characters founded in a weird mutual attraction/revulsion and moving on to quiet devotion. Keats tries to teach Fanny poetry and though her attempt are genuine, you feel that, like Harvey Keitel, she's more interested in the teacher than the lesson.

But whereas The Piano was harrowing, shocking, raw, Bright Star is a very chaste affair. In the hands of lesser performances, the love affair could have felt sterilized, but the chemistry is palpable between Abbie Cornish and Ben Whishaw. 

The movie's slow, luxurious pace is explained in a single line by Keats, who says that one does not dive into a lake "for the purpose of getting to the other side, but rather absorbing all the sensations". So I basked in the lush images, though after awhile the endless reptoire of flower fields got a bit tiring. 

But the ending is an emotional punch to the stomach. Cornish's crying scene is one of the best I've ever seen. It's not just one where the viewer merely watches and admires the mechanics of it (cough like I do for Leo Dicaprio), but I'm right there in her shoes, sobbing along with her as she cries for her mother. I actually turned away because it became too painful - I felt like I was Fanny.

And sure enough, just as she swept up the sad remains of Fanny's impulsive butterfly collection, just as she has done all her life, Mrs. Brawne comes to help her daughter back up again. 

I found a review that just made me smile, because in many ways it reflects my post-viewing feelings immediately, when I walked around the streets of New York, with a spring in my step and a glow in my eyes. Like Keats, I was dazzled, aware - my senses were sharper, both happy and devastated. I was shocked when I saw my reflection in a window; my hair was wavier, my eyes were brighter, my cheeks were pinker - I looked prettier. Never thought a movie could be a secret beauty sponge. 

From http://tgeorge12345.blogspot.com/2009/10/bright-star-review.html:

"When I walked out of the theatre, I felt other than before. Autumn cool, ground wet but not raining, and overcast, there was a certain lightness of mind, of decluttering, a scrubbing. Each step seemed a thing in and of itself, like the riding of a horse, a palpable sense of separation between the walking and the walker. Also the looking, as if through different eyes; occasioned of an equanimity tinged in fear, of something good, right, justified yet fleeting. Breath, too, the breath of morning in midday, a gentle rising and falling to match the gait. 

How does one describe the indescribable. To be changed and to know of the changing, a realignment, a tectonic shifting of soul and mind and even body--a lightness such as the unshouldering of a heavy coat, where everything, every step, lifts again in peaceful joy, neither frown nor smile burdened. And above all, a calm, the kind after a long, hard cry, when resistance gives way, is released into the wind, carried somewhere, away. 

I could write of the movie, the score, the acting, the cinematography. But everything I would say would pale the art as words always dilute their object. But I will say this, there are moments, devastating moments, when what is real and what is affected become confused, where one loses the sense of stage and in its place, a witnessing. Of what, I'm not sure. Yet, one knows upon the moment, of something other. "

The most common praise I've heard for this film is that it's "beautiful." And it is, in every sense of the world (funny when you consider that the movie actually has very muted tones). It's not just pretty in the sense of lavish costumes and glossy superrealism - it's like staring into a spring day or a single flower. The beauty fills your mind, your heart, the body with joy until the very soul is moved. You don't just watch it, you breathe it.