RasoirJ's Movie Notes; The Holy Mountain

The Holy Mountain (1925) Director: Arnold Fanck (rating = 2 = I tolerated it)

One of the very popular German genre in the 1920s of “mountain films,” in which the mountains stand for a kind of noble purity that elevates those who climb the highest peaks as beings beyond common humanity. Very German – the love of nature, the fascistic-religious exaltation of nature. The young Leni Riefenstahl, no slim chick, adds sex to the mix as she plays a dancer who hooks two mountain men in a classic love triangle. One guy winds up dangling by a rope over an abyss on a dark, stormy night on the north face while his buddy and rival for Leni locks into holding that rope. A remarkably lengthy and well shot cross-country ski race is a highlight. We cannot judge silent films of this era by the standards of realism that we bring to contemporary films. This move is a precursor of today’s action films, with the ski race as a chase and those craggy shots of men on mountain peaks standing in for derring-do. Hokey, yes, but also something more. The indelible money shot is the face of the senior mountain guy holding that rope on the ledge all night long as his eyebrows freeze in place and he turns into a kind of god. If nothing else, Fanck understood what visual story telling is all about.

RasoirJ's Book Notes: My Losing Season

My Losing Season, a memoir by Pat Conroy (Rating = 4 = I liked it a lot)

Conroy is a florid writer for my taste. He seems to love every metaphor that occurs to him, is not at all troubled by clichés, and has a streak of sentimentality astonishing in a military college grad. But still. The stories he has to tell of his senior year as point guard on the The Citadel basketball team are marvelous. He’s got the deadpan locker-room humor of athletes cutting on each other down beautifully. Of course, this book is about much more than basketball, though it’s one of the top five inside-sports books I’ve ever read (and I’ve read a lot). It’s also about a writer finding his vocation and voice. And no one has have ever had to cope with a tougher, meaner SOB of a father than Conroy. On top it all, the portrait of the driven, egomaniacal Citadel coach Mel Thompson is a classic of the type.

Quotes:
 “Athletics are mercilessly fair.”

“Coaching at a military college is the hardest coaching job in America.”

“America is a good enough country to die for, even when she is wrong.”

RasoirJ's Book Notes: The Elegance of the Hedgehog

The Elegance of the Hedgehog, a novel by Muriel Barbery  (Rating =1 = I hated it)
I’ve seldom disliked a book as much as this one, and would never have finished it if not for it being a book club selection. Told mostly from the point of view of a lowly yet intellectually sterling concierge, the novel is pretentious in the extreme – full of pseudo-profound arty and philosophical bushwa as well as constant scorn for the French bourgeoisie and the intellectual classes who live in the apartment building. The concierge narrator’s superior stance and her stream of invective make her a tough character to live with for a whole book. Just as bad and even less plausible – the alternate narrator is a preciously precocious 12-year-old kid who lives in the same building and has the same attitudes as the concierge. No wonder they turn into sentimental soul-mates by the conclusion. What unadulterated claptrap.

Quotes:
“The only purpose of cats is that they constitute mobile decorative objects.”

“Children help us to defer the painful task of confronting ourselves, and grandchildren take over from them.”

“I take the measure of how the ridiculous, superfluous cats who wander through our lives with all the placidity and indifference of an imbecile are in fact guardians of life’s good and joyful moments.”

RasoirJ's Book Notes: The Bookshop

The Bookshop, a novel by Penelope Fitzgerald (Rating = 3 = I liked it)
Fitzgerald is a quirky writer who constantly surprises in this story of a middle-aged woman who opens a book shop in a bleak Sussex town aptly called Hardborough. The atmosphere and the landscape of a seaside village in the 1950s are convincing. There’s no sentimentality in Fitzgerald – a surprise and a strength. You have to like a book in which a crucial incident is whether to sell and display Lolita.

Quotes: “It’s a peculiar thing to take a step forward in middle age.”

“Men and women aren’t quite the right people for each other.”

“A good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life, and as such it must surely be a necessary commodity.”