Apu Not Forgotten- On "The World of Apu"- briefly

With friends visiting from out of town and planning upcoming events, I forgot about Satyajit Ray's film "The World of Apu". The film is short and doesn't use the score to manipulate tears from the audience. It is a seamless fusion of word and image. A love story about a starving artist and fate. When I see corny trailers for contemporary films marketing obtuse love stories, they make me cringe. I see denial being peddled like crack during a depression. The movie begins with Apu having to drop out of school because he can't afford tuition. He's not too disappointed because he's confident that he'll become a successful novelist. A good friend invites him to his cousin's wedding to enjoy some food, drink, and have a good time in the country. When Apu arrives, the bride's mother is enamored by him. Thinking it odd, she dismisses it attributing it to Apu's good looks. The marriage is arranged. Nobody's met the groom who apparently comes from a good family. When he arrives, he is unstable and noticeably mentally ill. Whether out of desperation to marry off his daughter, the father insists that the groom's condition is due to traveling a long distance. If the girl isn't married as planned, she'll be forever disgraced. Someone has got to marry her. Apu being the eligible bachelor and not related, is the prime candidate and chooses to help save the girl's honor. They go back to Calcutta to his small roof top room and fall in love with time. It's amazing how when done by an amazing director/storyteller like Satyajit Ray, this obvious set up is beautiful and resonant. No, I don't want some one to do the Hollywood version or Euro-minimal deconstruction of Ray's film. It's perfect as it is. Yes, there is tragedy. Heaps of it. It's what makes it perfect and none of it is drab. Not one bit.

I tried reading Armes again after the film. And found “Third World Filmmaking and the West” drier than before. When I compare it to Robert Stam and Ella Shoat's “Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media”. Armes' book misses the Chutzpah.

The next book on the shelf is "Assassins", by Stephen Sondheim.....

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Almost struck out, but along came a Russian

Thank heavens that Lev Manovich wrote an essay in this book (“What is Digital Cinema?"). If he hadn't I think I would have used the first of three strikes. The Digital Dialectic isn't a horrible book, I just feel that some of the writing isn't very seductive. I totally avoided the book for a few weeks. After a great start with discovering Buffalo Heads through the dedication, I found the first essay to be dull. Trying to alleviate the situation I jumped around but dozed off. Manovich was manna from heaven! He is so specific in his writing and gets to the point. His thesis pretty much is that digital cinema is a beautiful bigamous marriage between the photograph, painting and collage. His describing the loop as a function comparable to photography's capturing the decisive moment felt as if my brain had gotten a dusting. His essay seemed to be his book in a nutshell, and I wonder which came first.

I don't think I will read the entire book cover to cover. I've decided to select some essays instead. My next book is more theory so I may do this again instead of using a strike. The next essay will be on ethics and the digital world. Let's see how it goes.

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The First Shelf

In order of appearance Title/Last Name:

Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America/Lippard
The Language of New Media/Manovich
Victorian and Edwardian Fashion: A Photographic Survey/Gernsheim
3rd World Film Making and the West/Armes
The Development of Segregationist Thought/Newtry
Assassins/Sondheim
The Book of Folly/Sexton
The Balcony/Genet
In the Zone/Murphy & White
Metamorphisis/Kafka
The Soul of the New Machine/Kidder
The Last Days of Socrates/Plato
Urban Renewal/Bellush & Hansknedt
Leviathian/Hobbes
Apocrypha/various
The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist/Breytenbach
The Executioners Song/Mailer
Warring Women of India/various
Seven Pillars of Wisdom/Lawrence
To Discover the True Self I Must Die/Master Dae Haeong
The Disuniting of America/Schlesinger
I and Thou/Buber
The Left Hand of Darkness/Le Guin
Foucault's Pendulum/Eco
A Prayer for Owen Meany/Irving
One Hundred Years of Solitude/Marquez
Alternatives to Violence/various
The Republic of Plato/Cornford
Popular Cultures and National Identity of the Dominican Republic I/Oritz
Popular Cultures and National Identity of the Dominican Republic II/Oritz
De Anima (on the Soul)/Aristole
The Colonial Heritage of Latin America/Stein
How to be an Alien/Mikes
Paula/Allende
The Vietnam War/Young
Tekstura: Writings on Russian New Media/Efimovais & Manovich
In the Time of Butterflies/Alvarez
Freedom from Fear/Suu Kyi
Oh Pray These Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well/Angelou