Random thoughts on Tuesday...

Although Tuesday has just about come to an end in my time zone, I’d just like to share a few things that have been on my mind today.

Bullhead

Michael R. Roskam’s “Bullhead” didn’t win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards on Sunday.  It doesn’t matter, really. It’s still an amazing film. If you have a chance to go and see it, you really should.  It’s a beautiful, complex and slightly disturbing film and I was completely overwhelmed by it when I saw it a few months ago.
Matthias Schoenaerts’ performance is breathtaking, his transformation from slick, good- looking actor into this beast is unbelievably genuine and vivid that it left me trembling in my seat.

Matthias Schoenaerts, remember that name. If he plays his cards right, he’ll have a wonderful future in film, hopefully not only in Hollywood where he seems to be ‘hot’ at the moment, but also back in Europe. An American film critic described it like this: “Matthias Schoenaerts turns in one of the oddest, subtlest and confusing performances in memory. He is both the film's greatest piece and its big weakness. He plays a meathead -or in this case, a Bullhead - a slightly simple but far from stupid young man whose identity is lost in a swirling concoction of steroids and hormones. He’s someone who wants to do good but can't, his destiny predetermined by a childhood incident that is shocking and too disturbing to put into words here.”

One of the possible reasons why Bullhead did not win the Oscar is because the story is so completely Belgian. The darkness of the cities, the sadness of the countryside and the cattle farms. The different dialects used in the film that give it so many layers are unfortunately completely lost in translation. So I can understand why an American audience would not be able to identify with the film and its protagonist. It doesn’t matter, really. It’s still an amazing film.

Sonnet 138

When my love swears that she is made of truth
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutor'd youth,
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false speaking tongue:
On both sides thus is simple truth suppress'd.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O, love's best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told:
 Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
 And in our faults by lies we flatter'd be.

I watched an episode of season 3 of Spooks today in which Will quotes Shakespeare’s Sonnet 138 to Zoë.
I never realised that there’s actually a lot of poetry in Spooks. Skully made a list on the Spooks fan blog:  http://spooksfanblog.com/2011/05/04/poetry-in-spooks-an-extensive-list/

In Stereo: Upstairs Downstairs

I’m watching the first and second series of Upstairs Downstairs at the same time. One is on Belgian TV on Tuesday evenings, the other on the BBC  on Sundays. My husband commented that that must be so confusing, but I don’t find it confusing at all. I’m always reading several books at the same time as well: one in the morning when I’m on the train to work, and another one in the evening before I go to sleep.

Dubstep violin

A friend of mine shared this video on Facebook and I simply had to share it here. The music is beautiful – enjoy!!

Lindsey Stirling – Crystallize

Poetry on my iPod...

I'm currently listening to PRELUDES by T.S. Eliot,
as read by Richard Armitage for Symphony of the City on BBC Radio 3 in 2010.

Even though I studied English at university and had to analyse many aspects of English and American literature and culture, I was never really interested in poetry. This poem, however, speaks to me in a way that very few texts ever have. I keep going back to it and love to listen to these beautiful words while I walk to the train station after a long day at work, or on a cold and dark winter morning when the city is still half asleep. Beautiful words, yes, read by a beautiful voice, but not a beautiful subject. And it’s exactly that contradiction between the sad and soulless city and the beauty of the description that continues to fascinate me.

John Thornton (Richard Armitage) walks the dingy streets of Milton in the BBC's adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's North & South

Source: www.richardarmitagenet.com

I don’t want to go into a detailed analysis of the poem, but here’s a short description of my own interpretation:

T.S. Eliot wrote the four sections of his Preludes between 1909 and 1911. It describes the degradation and sadness of modern city life.

The first section describes an evening, a rainy day coming to an end with more rain on empty streets.

The second section describes a cold morning. The city wakes up, but the smell of the drunken night before is still in the air. People flock to coffee stands and put their ‘work face’ on, hoping that that will give them the strength to survive another hard day.

In the third section, a woman is lying in bed, thinking about her sorry excuse for a life and the cold world that she has to live in. It seems like she’s not quite ready yet to get out of bed and start the day.

Section four is really the most depressing of all. The hollow, dirty city gets trampled by insistent feet of people who want to get home as soon as possible. They are isolated as they hide behind their newspapers and they only care about financial gain (‘certain certainties’). They want to rule the world, but they don’t care about the person next to them. Although they might think that the world revolves around them, it really doesn’t and life goes on as it always has. People remain nameless, depressed, isolated and soulless.

The morale of the story: Life goes on, so make the most of it!

Depressing, right? Not really, and that’s the genius of T.S. Eliot!

You can listen to Richard Armitage’s reading of T.S; Eliot’s Preludes here:

http://www.richardarmitageonline.com/words-and-music/words-and-music-introduction.html

and here:

http://www.richardarmitagenet.com/career/210.html

Preludes (T.S. Eliot)

I         The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o'clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.

II        The morning comes to consciousness
Of faint stale smells of beer
From the sawdust-trampled street
With all its muddy feet that press
To early coffee-stands.
With the other masquerades
That time resumes,
One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms.

III       You tossed a blanket from the bed,
You lay upon your back, and waited;
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted;
They flickered against the ceiling.
And when all the world came back
And the light crept up between the shutters,
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the bed's edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.

IV       His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o'clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.