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6.11.2004

the fog of war 

well, i'm probably the last person that ought to be saying much about errol morris' film the fog of war-- what with my abyssmal knowledge of history and all-- but i thought i'd react to it anyway. for the sake of debate, if nothing else.

first off, it's not neccessarily a great documentary by any means. the dull philip glass soundtrack is only noticeable because the name "philip glass" is attached to it... the artistic flourishes are painfully literal and un-inventive (i.e. dominoes falling in slo-mo across a map of vietnam)... and yet, it's still compelling-- as a slice of history, if nothing else.

as you may already know, the fog of war is the result of a series of interviews conducted with robert mc namara, former u.s. secretary of defense during the kennedy and johnson administrations. the film covers a lot of ground (woodrow wilson, WWII, cuba, vietnam, etc., etc.), and is that rarest of rare american films--one that is decidedly too short. it's almost a relief to watch a film that seems too short these days... funny how ang lee takes three fucking hours to explore every nuance of the hulk's abused inner child but poor robert mc namara gets three minutes of heavily edited sound-bytes to explain the allied fire-bombing of japan... but i guess that's more the fault of the culture than the film... heh heh. suffice to say a lot of ideas are tossed around without proper development.

mc namara doesn't exactly help either. as a relative youngster (i.e. born following the vietnam war), he struck me as still pretty arrogant. i also found him a bit less apologetic than the hype surrounding the film might suggest. also, the whole production is structured around a series of "life lessons" of his, which extend the general lack of explanation and development into the realms of half-hearted essentialist philosophy. put simply, the "lessons" are mostly a series of cliches.

but within this all-too-general re-cap of american emergencies, catastrophies and intensities, your mind does start to go places. and the image of mc namara, now well into his eighties, engaging with the consequences of his own historical decisions does have a certain weight to it. i'm tempted to say that this weight goes beyond what he's saying as a person. it's possibly a cluster of a number of things: cult of personality, stylistic embellishments which point to "wisdom," actual wisdom, guilt, conviction, pride and vulnerability-- all operating together with auratic results. i found myself wondering not so much what it would be like to be robert mc namara, but what it might be like to swim through his unconscious.

6.09.2004

devendra banhart, in two parts 

* devendra banhart is making some really interesting music. days in the wake-era will oldham is a decent point of reference, but before you cry "been there, done that" comes the twist of psychedelic randomness, giving the two records i've bought by him a quality not unlike "tyrannosaurus rex"-era t.rex. the earlier record, oh me oh my is a lo-fi oddity not unlike early smog, minus the venomous misanthropy (not that that's a bad thing). there are a million songs on it, it seems-- and some are better than others-- but it maintains a spontaneous playfulness throughout. even at their most disposable, the songs seem as if he had to get them off his chest. the more recent, more hyped record-- rejoicing in the hands is more handsome, and reaches greater heights, i think, in the end. the songs feel really natural, and their "weirdness" feels natural as well. banhart plays as if unaware of playing a role. he jumps from folk hippie sage to acid freak to prankster to surrealist without ever seeming as if he's striking a pose-- or even vying for some sort of "sincerity status," which i think is a far deeper charade these days than that great terror known as "postmodern irony" or whatever. at any rate, this is beautiful music.

* devendra banhart is making some really interesting drawings as well. they sprawl across the album layout, morphing from sketches to lyrics to thank you lists in a continous stylistic flow. they're doodles, in the end, but they steer clear of the nerd-boy-chic doodles of artists like marcel dzama. they're cartoonish, but not pop, and they combine the compulsive repetition of a surrealist exquisite corpse with the grace and tenderness of the gorgeous, devotional shaker drawings i had the pleasure of seeing at the drawing center in NYC a while back. he's also using text-- and pulling it off-- which is something i admire on a personal level, as i attempt to do so myself.

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