If You Care for Good Narrative, You Must See This Film

Go see 'A History of Violence.' Don't read anything before you go--no reviews. Go in without expectation of what the story is about, and I promise you will be rewarded.

I saw it last night, under similar conditions: I didn't really know what it was about, didn't know what people had said about it. And I can't stop thinking about it.

Narratively, it is one of the tightest movies I have seen in a long, long time, and this even with astonishingly patient camera work that you think would make a movie "slow," but it doesn't. I can only find the word "patient" to describe those scenes, and they were essential to the film, and made me long for the days when movies weren't so frenetically edited and cut. (Mostly relevant tangent: They say that Mr. Rogers is so appealing to very young children because of the pace of that show--very slow and it takes place in real time--it makes sense to children and because it is so close to real time, they are comforted by a sense of understanding. I think that though adults can superficially understand what is happening in a jumpy and flashily edited scene, that we don't psychologically or emotionally connect, which is how desensitization happens. We lose the characters and our ability to empathize with them when we are barraged with images of them--for all our adult sophistication, I still think we understand on the level of the body only when we are allowed to let something sink in, to think for a minute, to breathe at the same pace the actors are breathing.)

Okay, so the miraculous thing about this film is, you get to do this, but it is never boring. I'd like to go see it again, purely so I can see how the narrative unfolds in this patient, full way, but without boring us. It is artfully done, that's all I can say.

I marveled, too, at the specificity of detail--it made the film so fresh and original--I never felt as though I were watching stereotypes or cliches. And the narrative arc was so perfectly formed and satisfying. There are many things done on the level of the literary in this film, so much so that I know I can learn from it, just as I would from a story or book. Actually, as I was watching it, I felt like it was the same kind of experience I have reading a short story--the perfect length, nothing wasted. Nothing was longer or shorter than it needed to be.

Do I have any complaints about this movie? Honestly, not really. It is a rich work, and I know that on subsequent viewings it will reveal itself even more fully.

Go see it. Really. Go.

The Current Read: Middlemarch

In my reading pursuits, I usually alternate between contemporary fiction and the classics. (Though I do mix in the nonfiction to keep it interesting, and to keep learning... Read The Emperor of Scent and see if you're not blown away by the insights there into our sense of smell.)

Anyway, I'm in a classics phase now, currently reading Middlemarch by George Eliot and finding it amazingly fresh. I am always astonished at how something written well over a hundred years ago can feel so immediate, and how clearly the voice carries though the author and her time are long gone. This is, of course, part of the appeal of writing--the immortality aspect--though the older I get the less and less it is related to preservation of my ego specifically, and the more it becomes about leaving something beautiful behind. I strongly believe that we can all be a force for good, for beauty, if we just use our talents to their fullest potential.

Okay, well, enough about what I believe--too closely related to ego, right? Middlemarch has some slow-going passages, but on the whole I am engaged, and I just find the work to be so compelling. There's also something to be said for reading it as a female, because though the eras seem so different--hers and mine--I recognize so many of the same frustrations and thoughts that a woman has as she tries to make her mark in a world that still largely forces women to choose between her professional/artistic talents and her family and homelife. Now, as then, there is little societal support for a very ambitious woman.

I'm about halfway in, and the more I read, the more I am enfolded in the drama. I recommend it heartily, and I hope that as I read I am gaining even more understanding of the literary craft.

It Takes A Village...

....to write a story.

Now I remember why I went to get the MFA: Community.

Five months out now, and I don't have anyone to share my work with, and so the advance of revision gets stalled at the point where I have no more ideas on how to further the story or polish an ending.

As difficult, painful and annoying as workshop could be, I can't express how much I miss that built-in community of readers who were as eager (or as inescapably obligated) to read your stuff as you were to read theirs. That community was where I did most of my growth as a writer, and I am feeling rather at a loss without them right now.

Of course, I will just have to create a new community, but as with any such architectural endeavor, it will take time, and sweat, and a lot of cajoling to keep it together, at least until it becomes well established on a permanent foundation. But I can't do this alone, and as wonderful as my non-writer readers are, they are not trained in the narrative arts at the level that my fellow writers at Arizona are. Or perhaps they are as astute to narrative, but do not have a grasp of the vocabulary, of the means of expression to communicate what is missing, why something does not satisfy.

So I will get there, but in the meantime, I just feel set adrift, my former community scattered to the winds, and I all alone on the quest to make meaning.

(Okay, pardon the pity party I'm throwing here. But I really do feel alone. I know I'm not, which is heartening, but where will I find all of you? And how long will it take?)