Two years ago, with the creation of two sections in the Berlin Film Festival
press cafe, 1) smoking and 2) the banal, puerile, Americanized non-smoking,
I believed greatness of German culture was on the wane--the culture of Mozart,
Schiller, Goethe, Heine and Cabaret. Out of respect for those great dead
Germans, I lobbied for the two sections to be changed to smoking and chain-smoking,
and was accused of trying to make more Germans dead. So my campaign was
unsuccessful. But I am relieved to see that shreds of German greatness are
being revived by the arrangement this year in the Royal Palast theater:
smokers sit behind a Plexiglas wall. Some viewers felt this recalled unpleasant
associations with ghettoes and other such great German ideas, but I prefer
to think the Royal Palast is borrowing from Germany's great Jewish heritage,
which, in Orthodox synagogues, sits women behind walls call Mechitzas. Now
the Berlinale has Smoking Mechitzas. Germany has done it again, neither
America nor American Jews have thought of it.
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I am pleased to report that, not only is German culture in good health,
but so is the American. Some literacy snobs in the U.S. have been alarmed
that 40% of the adult population cannot read a newspaper article and summarize
it and only the top 2s% can be considered "highly literate," or
at least literate by American standards. But as I look at recent American
movies, I'm downright impressed by the culture. Consider the new memory-retrieval
genre exemplified by Strange Days, Johnny Mnemonic and the new Panorama
film Unforgettable (by John Dahl, The Last Seduction). Unforgettable is
a cross between the earlier Strange Days and Interview with a Vampire, with
blood-sucking replaced by shooting up cerebral fluid from Other People's
Brains (which I understand was the film's provisional title). This provides
memory flashes from other people's lives. Ray Liotta does this for two hours,
but this is not what I mean by American culture. I mean the Enlightenment
underpinnings of the memory-retrieval genre. The Enlightenment proposed
that education brings understanding and the ability to address the problems
of social organization. The memory retrieval films suggest the same thing:
that the added education (from Other People's Brains) brings understanding
and the ability to address problems. Well, perhaps not education, but the
film suggests at least that basic information brings the ability to solve
problems. Perhaps not precisely information but at least "raw experience,"
as Liotta says. Or if not actual experience, then at least pictures of experiences
that look a lot like Nintendo games. That counts as "culture,"
does it not, at least by American standards ?
The party for Unforgettable, organized by Albert Wiederspiel, had two great
dollops of culture: a terrific jazz band and duck liver which for some reason
Mr. Wiederspiel served in sorbet-sized scoops that, with the pinkish color
of the meat, looked unavoidably like men's genitals. This made eating them
"cultural," I suppose. It made me wonder what sorts of games Wiederspiel
had in mind.
Those readers who have not yet had their fill of culture might look to Richard
III. Shakespeare is guaranteed culture, even if the Richard Loncraine-lan
McKellen adaptation sets the film during a fascist putsch in 1930s England
and gives it the speed and lust of a political thriller. It's redundant
to say that everyone onscreen is smashing, except Annette Bening whose hollow
whine has never since The Grifters found a role slight enough to suit it.
But more impressive than the acting is the adaptation itself, which has
the genius to recast "Now is the winter of our discontent..."
as a victory-ball toast that ends in a urinal. I believe this brings us
back to the Wiederspiel school of culture.
At the press conference for "Get Shorty", Danny DeVito expressed
disappointment that the film received no Oscar nominations and said he and
Travolta intend to nab awards next year for a new film in which Travolta
play a farmer and DeVito, a pig.
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