The Magic Lantern

We, Persians, are famous of unique demeanors and grooves, some are righteous, some are culpable. One of the latter ones is our inclination to necrolatry not in its literal meaning but in the way that we tend to praise long eulogies for the mortified ones and exaggerate about their virtuous traits when just before they die, we completely ignore them or in the case they present or support some contrary or unique idea, we destroy them as much as we can.

I felt the same when I wanted to write about the news I read today in the papers: "Swedish Director Ingmar Bergman Passes Away In The Age of 89".

Sometimes you find the great ideas and people so late. A couple of months ago I watched my second film of him, Winter Light, my first film of him was Wild Strawberries. I was astound with what he does with lights in his films and how simply, with no action or much effort he presents the most complicated cognition of human-beings and God relativity in Winter Light. It was very impressive. So I bought his autobiography, The Magic Lantern, and collected around 20 of his films with the help of a friend. I was about to define an "Ingmar Bergman Project" for myself, but I postponed it, to deal with "some more important stuff"*, anyway. Now that he's dead, I should be Persian.

* ...and who knows which is which and who is who...

Infinite Creativity

The Five Obstructions (2003)
Directed by: Lars Von Trier & Joergen Leth
IMDB
My Rate: 5/5

Some call it an aristocrat fancy game of two intellectual directors. I don't see anything wrong about it even if we consider it so.

Actually it's a meta film. Von Trier challenges his favorite director Joergen Leth on remaking one of his earliest films called The Perfect Human, which is a unique short film about how the director sees human being as a series of motions, habits, manners, actions and reactions. Over these shots of a single actor and actress, Leth asks questions like "What does the perfect human think about?" and so.

To do so, Von Trier sets very random and spontaneous obstructions for Leth, on his way to remake the short film. Like that when they speak about smoking a Havana cigar, Von Trier comes with the idea that his first episode should be filmed in Cuba! You can read about the obstructions here.

What made me so fond of this film is what it left me in the end. Just like Von Trier's masterwork, Dogville, you are imbued with some feeling of vague awareness that is hard to express in words and questions like who is who, how things are done, how a spark of an idea leads to some splendid consequent that no one has ever thought about it. How infinite the human being's creativity can be? Does it make the human perfect? I don't know.

Signals And Systems

Finally you find somewhere quiet, you sit down and close your eyes for a moment, you take a deep breath, play your media player to listen to your favorite songs, you inhale deeper and deeper, you ventilate your lungs more and more, you feel your heart beating slow down, you stretch your hands and feet, and enjoy the blood rushing through them, this is heaven... but suddenly your phone rings! RING .... RING ... RING ..., and you sell your heaven to a phone call that 99% of the times is not a matter of life and death. It seems inevitable, it's like we're conditioned to such things like a phone call. When it rings you give up everything to answer it! Who has set it as a rule? How has it penetrated in our minds? How many times has it happened to you?

Phone calls are not the only example of this situation. We do things in certain ways that we have used to them. But just think about doing them in some other style. Maxwell Maltz suggests: one morning when you go to work, as you fasten your shoelaces, and you always put the right lace on the left one, this time do it vice versa, and see how the world changes within you.

Next time it rings, just smile to it, and tell I won't answer you, and see how some strong feeling of joy spreads in your veins. Of course there's a caller ID function and you can call him or her back a couple of minutes later, but feel that you have the choice, you are not a slave of a human made signal, you are free, just don't let it ruin your moment of glory.

P.S. To friends: hey don't test it on me, I am the one who suggests it to you so exempt me from your experience, thank you. ;)