Books
9.
The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling, by David Shoemaker
In hindsight, I'm surprised by how prominent a role professional wrestling has played in my adult friendships. I had watched professional wrestling as a kid (the skit where the Ultimate Warrior is bitten by a cobra after Jake "The Snake" Roberts betrayed him after Warrior asked Roberts to help him overcome his fears so he could defeat the Undertaker sticks in my mind), but I wasn't really invested in professional wrestling until my freshman year in college, when I saw three future friends watch SummerSlam 2000, specifically the Tables, Ladders, and Chairs match that featured Edge & Christian, the Hardy Boyz, and the Dudley Boyz ("z" was used to copyright their names and because it was the late 1990's/early 2000's). Professional wrestling, in the form of WCW/nWo: Revenge on the Nintendo 64, cemented our friendships, as our nightly boisterous battle royales gave us the testing platform that assured that our personalities were compatible.
After college, professional wrestling still played a key role in my connections to the world, especially since I had nothing but disposable time and income. I dragged my oldest friends to wrestling shows in Long Island and the City; eventually, they made it clear that the bonds of friendship can be stretched by professional wrestling only so far, and it was clear to me that they didn't enjoy it as much as I did anyway. I made new friends who would travel with me to Philadelphia and small towns in Connecticut and Pennsylvania to watch niche independent professional wrestling companies' shows. And professional wrestling is the bond that brings my current friends together every month as we watch pay-per-views with strangers, soaking in the atmosphere as much as the actual show on screen.
For all that, I hadn't been compelled to learn more about the history of professional wrestling in the United States, much less Canada, Mexico, Japan, India, or any of the European nations that lay claim to professional wrestling's history. Shoemaker's book is a good primer for professional wrestling history, filtered through wrestlers who exemplified the different eras of wrestling. The essays, which are mostly adapted from his
The Dead Wrestler of the Week columns on Deadspin.com, are too brief but insightful as they try to summarize the wrestlers' lives and how they impacted or were impacted by the periods in which they plied their craft.
Shoemaker tries to fit almost a century's worth of wrestling in his book, and his ambition oustrips the book's format's ability to discuss much of it in detail. Because the essays are adapted from his columns, there is a lot of repetition; in a more traditional book, the repetition would be used to create explicit links of thought and common ideas. As it is, it feels more like a collection of columns that mention his ideas rather than a book of eulogies that unite around common themes.
Take, for example, his essays about the Modern Era wrestlers Brian "Crush" Adams and Yokozuna. Each touches on the period of creative floundering that the then-WWF (now WWE) suffered during the mid-1990s. Each touches on the geopolitics of professional wrestling, how wrestling exploits the value of the foreign Other in order to give the fans easy delineations between hero and villain, and how this is one of the oldest tricks in professional wrestling's book. The two teamed together on various occasions. But the connections between them are not made explicit or explored for the book's thematic impact.
The book attempts to be comprehensive about professional wrestling in the United States, but there are some odd omissions. Shoemaker claims (rightfully) that Extreme Championship Wrestling played a large role in how professional wrestling in the Modern Era changed; however, notable wrestlers who worked in Extreme Championship Wrestling, like Anthony "Pitbull #2" Durante or Mike "Mike Awesome/The Gladiator" Alphonso, aren't covered, which leaves the book with an ECW-shaped hole. He also discusses that Vincent K. McMahon is the current champion of professional wrestling in the United States, but his format doesn't allow him to discuss the fall of the WWE's main competitor, World Championship Wrestling, because no one who is particularly identified with that company is dead yet.
Shoemaker's book makes for a good introductory primer about professional wrestling in the United States, but there is still much more to discuss. I hope that he writes a follow-up book; he's shown a deft pen for explaining the history to the uninitiated and for separating the various layers of reality in which professional wrestling operates.
Movies
15.
Stoker
The first English movie by Chan-wook Park (
Oldboy,
Sympathy for the Mr. Vengeance,
Sympathy for Lady Vengeance) feels less transgressive than his Korean works, but it retains the dynamic, confident camera movements and sumptuous colors that you would expect from a Park film. It's a lovely Gothic film, full of oppressive silences and fiery glances between characters. You will believe that you can seduce someone with a piano duet.
At heart, the story, which reminds me of Tennessee Williams's plays and Sylvia Plath's poetry, is simple, but the visuals that Park and cinematographer Chung Chung-hoon create are so lush that they keep the eyes captive. Some of those images, like the spider crawling up Mia Wasikowska's India's leg, don't seem to have a narrative payoff, but that only becomes apparent in hindsight.
The title, the fact that Matthew Goode's Charlie insists on being invited by India to stay at their home rather, the glass of deep red wine that Charlie shares with India, and the way Charlie and India strike their victims all imply the vampiric, parasitic way Charlie attaches himself to India and Evie's family. And Park's last film was Thirst, a film about vampires and love. Stoker is another take by Park on love and an emotional vampire, but it's also about a girl's coming of age from a sullen, nearly-mute teenage girl to a sexually awakened and expressive woman point to something else.
Wasikowska's performance captivates you until it reaches its release, and Matthew Goode's performance is an exercise in control until the facade is broken. Kidman plays the over-mannered, withdrawn mother of many a Gothic tale. I wish more time had been given to Dermot Mulroney's performance as Richard, husband to Evie and father to India, but his appearances are well placed because the irony in Evie's comparisons of Charlie to Richard needs the time and space to build. The twist is too reminiscent of Dexter and the story ultimately too flat in retrospect for Stoker to have the lasting power of Oldboy or the Vengeance films, but it's a lush experience while it lasts.
16.
Amour
It's not a conversation that I relish, but I have no choice to discuss the end with my wife. It's not a conversation that's finished; I've made some of my wishes clear, but nothing's been codified, and things change. When the time comes, I hope I face it with dignity, and I hope that my family respects my choices. I can only hope that they love me enough to do at least that.
We have to have these conversations because time is the indefatigable enemy. The fear and anticipation of death is the greatest creative force in human history; science is driven by the need to fight it; religions were created to answer what happens after it and to provide comfort in the face of it.
Michael Haneke's no stranger on the topic of death; in
Funny Games, he challenged our complicity in watching characters die on screen. In
The White Ribbon, he gave a moral explanation for what caused World War I. In
Amour, he explores the intersection of love and our duty to our loved ones in difficult times.
He taunts us from the start by smashing to the title after showing one of the characters in repose, making us wonder if the title is compassionate or taunting. He teases us by showing the film's characters sitting down to watch us watch them; eventually, one of them has no choice but to watch the other's degeneration. He tweaks the Western European mainstream audience who would watch his films by making the octogenarians Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) and Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) the embodiment of Western European haute-bourgeois refinement, retired music teachers who live in a spacious, well-appointed apartment. This apartment becomes a prison as much as Anne's body, once it betrays her will be. It baits us into reading deeply the fact that the man watches while the woman suffers or how age has replaced the intimacies we share with our lovers in our youth with the need to help our partners with her toilet.
As much as Haneke might want to tweak our noses about Anne's and Georges's first world privilege, the film has a surprising tenderness for them. The tenderness gives the film, and what there is of its twist (though it's a conclusion that's fairly obvious from the start) its power. I was frankly surprised by how humanist Haneke's film was, how touching it was, how it invites the viewer to pity the characters.
17.
Zero Dark Thirty
There's something funny about Kathryn Bigelow making Jessica Chastain look like the splitting image of Linda Hamilton in one scene in the staging area in Afghanistan.
Let's put aside the argument about whether Bigelow glamorizes torture in the film and the argument about the efficacy of advanced interrogation techniques (or torture) in obtaining information. Let's also put aside the argument that it's a partisan work, that it downplays the Obama administration's role in the assassination of Osama bin Laden. Let's even put aside whether government-sanctioned murder is right, regardless of whether we inject actual troops into the field or whether it's done from afar. And let's put aside whether Bigelow was right to include actual 911 voicemails from September 11, 2001 in the beginning of the film.
As a film, I'm not sure what
Zero Dark Thirty actually does well. It doesn't work as an action film; the raid on the compound is competently composed, but the film doesn't give the members of Seal Team Six enough time for us to care about what happens, especially when they're portraying such recent history that we all know what happens. There's no tension to the scene, and this part of the film doesn't work as a thriller or an action film.
It doesn't work as a political thriller, again because we know what happens. It doesn't work as a drama about an individual standing against the system. Chastain shows her character's frustration about inaction once they've determined bin Laden's location well, but all the angst is sound and fury signifying nothing.
So, I'm left wondering what I got out of the 2.5 hours I gave
Zero Dark Thirty that I didn't already have, and I'm left with all the things that we put aside at the beginning. I wonder how much of the film's inability to generate drama comes from the fact that the film straddles the line between fiction and reality, depicting neither in a particularly entertaining way.
18.
Red Eye
This was a taut thriller that just outlived its welcome, which is strange since it only lasted 85 minutes. It made me wonder what happened to Rachel McAdams; it seemed like she was primed to be a superstar, but it didn't happen. Maybe it will still happen, but it seemed like the momentum of the early 2000s is gone.
The tension seems to dissipate once we leave the plane, and as tight as the movie is, it still seems to limp to its conclusion. The plot is a straight line; I was expecting more twisting and turning, but there simply isn't much to it.
19.
Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
The beginning of the film tried too hard to lean on a hedonistic approach to the end of the world to generate laughs (watch Rob Corddry pressure kids to drink alcohol because it's the end of the world, or watch Connie Britton talk about doing heroin because it's the end of the world, or watch Patton Oswalt joke about sleeping with family members because it's the end of the world), while the rest of the film felt like an extended
Dharma and Greg episode set during the cataclysmic end times. Keira Knightley plays your Manic Pixie Dream Girl, arms full of vintage vinyls and mouth spitting out rapid fire dialogue that should seem cute because Knightley has a British accent. Steve Carrell does his lowkey,
Dan in Real Life or
Crazy, Stupid, Love best, but it's just not enough to get past this saccharine, overly coy comedy. I thought it would be interesting to compare this film to
Melancholia, but a more apt comparison might actually be
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, which I detest because it processed the apocalyptic (in the old definition that meant it was a moment of transition) events of September 11, 2011 as a self-improvement exercise for a preteen survivor.
20.
The Place Beyond the Pines
I feel like this film pulled a bait-and-switch on me; it's advertised to be a vehicle for Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, and Eva Mendes, but all three characters are put on the sidelines for the second half of the film in favor of Emory Cohen and Cole DeHaan. You may remember Cole DeHaan from
Chronicle, where he played the unbalanced Andrew Detmer, or
In Treatment, where he played Jesse D'Amato.
The Place Beyond the Pines was Cohen's first major role; you may also remember him from his portrayal of Debra Messing's character's son on NBC's
Smash (The "Smash" Williams Story).
As a movie about two generations of men, the film poses an emotional investment problem to the viewer. We're invited to invest in the first half of the generational tale because 1) it comes first and 2) it features Gosling, Cooper, and Mendes. This section makes a strong impression; we open the film with a long tracking shot following Gosling's Luke Glanton leave his trailer for the
globe of death where he demonstrates his motorcycle riding skills. From there, we're treated to exciting motorcycle rides down long rural highways and bank robberies. The film's handoff from Gosling's Luke to Cooper's Avery Cross is well-executed, and the flow seems natural. After a title card announces that 15 years had passed, we're asked to put those investments aside and invest in two relatively unknown actors playing basically new characters. The scale is now much smaller as we follow two high school students get into smaller scale trouble. It's a strange arrangement, and it's problematic enough that it was distracting.
DeHaan follows his strong performance in
Chronicle with another strong performance in
The Place Beyond the Pines. I'm actually looking forward to his portrayal of Harry Osborne/The Green Goblin in
The Amazing Spider-Man 2; he plays conflicted and maddened with anger and grief very well. Cohen doesn't come off as well as Avery Cross's son, AJ, a meathead and petty criminal. The film tries to pull an ironic fate between DeHaan's character, who is Luke Glanton's son, and Cohen's. Look how the son of Avery Cross, hero cop and district attorney, is a petty criminal. Marvel at how the son of Luke Glanton, a bank robber styled the Moto Robber by the press, is a bit lost and dragged into legal trouble by the hero cop's son. It's a bit too precious.
So, we're left with a very strong two-thirds of the film and a last act that putters to its conclusion. I understand that writer/director Derek Cianfrance and his fellow writers Ben Coccio and Darius Marder were trying to create a generational epic about people on the fringes of society in a small, unremarkable town in upstate New York, but it's let down by the actors it features in the last act and the film's structure, which makes it difficult for viewers to create emotional investments to give the last act emotional weight.
