Wednesday, December 13, 2006
(9:13 PM) | Brad:
Rerun Movie: Songs from the Second Floor
Just finished watching, for the third time now, Songs From the Second Floor. What a great film. Between the visual comedy of a crucified Christ swinging like a pendulum because of the inadequacy of the icon's nails, to the greatest depiction of Nietzsche's vision of God's murder in the market (i.e., the heaving of Christ, repeatedly, seemingly endlessly, into the garbage heap, because he no longer sells), to the cinematic allusions to Godard's Weekend and Bergman's Seventh Seal, to the disturbing effect of a stationary camera, to the best director's commentary ever, the film rarely misses a beat. Possibly a little overt in its experimentation -- but just as possibly the best movie I've seen in the past two years.Plus, it never hurts when a movie is inspired by, and perhaps we could even say embodies, a poem I'd not heard before but have never forgotten since.
"Stumble between two stars," by César Vallejo
There are people so wretched, they don't even
have a body; their hair numbered,
their wise grief, low, in inches;
their manner, high;
don't look for me, the oblivion molar
they seem to come out of the air, to add up sighs mentally, to hear
bright smacks on their palates!
They leave their skin, scratching the sarcophagus in which they are born
and climb through their death hour after hour
and fall, the length of their frozen alphabet, to the ground.
Pity for so much! pity for so little! pity for them!
Pity in my room, hearing them with glasses on!
Pity in my thorax, when they are buying suits!
Pity for my white filth, in its combined scum!
Beloved be the sanchez ears,
beloved the people who sit down,
beloved the unknown man and his wife,
my fellow man with sleeves, neck and eyes!
Beloved be the one with bedbugs,
the one who wears a torn shoe in the rain,
the one who keeps vigil over the corpse of bread with two matches,
the one who catches a finger in a door,
the one who has no birthdays,
the one who lost his shadow in the fire,
the animal, the one who looks like a parrot,
the one who likes like a man, the rich poor man,
the extremely miserable man, the poorest poor man!
Beloved be
the one who is hungry or thirsty, but has no
hunger with which to satiate all his thirst,
nor thirst with which to satiate all his hungers!
Beloved be the one who works by the day, by the month, by the hour,
the one who sweats out of pain or out of shame,
the person who goes, at the order of his hands, to the movies,
the one who pays with what he does not have,
the one who sleeps on his back,
the one who no longer remembers his childhood; beloved be
the bald man without hat,
the just man without thorns,
the thief without roses,
the one who wears a watch and has seen God,
the one who has one honor and does not fail!
Beloved be the child, who falls and still cries
and the man who has fallen and no longer cries!
Pity for so much! Pity for so little! Pity for them!
