chani | And the week ended tragically (Reply)

According to Aristotle a tragedy is a form of drama characterized by seriousness and dignity, usually involving a conflict between a character and some higher power, such as the law, the gods, fate, or society.

In The Poetics, he also says that tragedy results in a catharsis of healing for the audience through their experience of these emotions in response to the suffering of the characters in the drama. That would be the goal of any tragedy. Therefore, a tragic show would be a kind of vaccination against passions

In Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche viewed tragedy as the art form of sensual acceptance of the terrors of reality and rejoicing in these terrors in love of fate (amor fati).

On Friday afternoon I saw Brokeback Mountain and yesterday I watched Battlestar Galactica 1x08 (interview with a cylon!) in the afternoon, then I spent a night at the opera (that was the title of a Queen's album, wasn't it?) and saw Madame Butterfly.

Did they fit in the definitions?

In a way, Brokeback Mountain fits in, since the characters are definitely overcome. Society and the forces of fate went against them and won. Even the beautiful landscapes of Wyoming, surrounding Jack and Ennis at the beginning of the movie, showed how small those little human beings were. The fate was lurking there, and the freedom was nothing but illusory. They were trapped over there...while the element played with them. Didn't you hear the gods plotting around, whispering little words of desire, pushing our sheep-boys toward each other, giving a last nudge on a very cold night? I did.
It's a good movie, not as tear-jerking as I expected, but it isn't a movie I will rewatch soon because it was too depressing and didn't feel good when I left the theatre (I didn't have the weight on my chest I had when I saw Peter Mulan's The Magdalene Sisters but still).

I did like the first part, the falling-in-love time, the way they parted (and Ennis' violent physical reaction) and I think that the strongest scene of the movie is when they are reunited, 4 years later. The rush, the hug they shared, how they wanted to touch each other, almost kissed but couldn't and had to hide, seeking the shadow and then giving in...that was intense, and so was Michelle Williams' character (the actress was incredible). I felt awful for her. Her name, Alma, suited her.

But from then on, in the film, there was nothing but pain.

I like angst, I can take a lot, I don't need a happy ending but I need something to hang on, something that make me feel it's worth it, that there's love or something and it's grand, but at the end of the day the pain and the feeling of loss were overwelming in Brokeback Mountain. Forbidden love or impossible love is a classic theme in literature or movies, but usually there is some love going on, no matter how tragically the story ends, no matter the choices of renunciation that are made. You can feel how strong that love was and you get some satisfaction. Take The Bridges of Madison County for instance. But in Brokeback Mountain, they don't give up, they keep seeing each other 3 times a year, yet it doesn't work. During their last meeting Jack's flashback is significant, as if the love they could have shared, the promise of love, had been left behind them, in the Brokeback Mountain of their youth, unfulfilled.

Not only the two men weren't allowed to love each other, but also it was like they simply can't love each other, or at least Ennis who was overcome with fear, could not ( oddly enough it's Jack that kept moving me during the movie, not Ennis Del Mar). Despite their moments of intimacy, they didn't manage to have a love story. Jack kept dreaming of what their love story could have been but never was, over 20 years. And that was distressing. There was nothing, nothing to hang on, except maybe the beauty of pictures and shots (how pretty the house of Jack's parents was for instance!). The film mostly provided sadness and frustration rather than a catharsis of healing. I wonder what Aristotle would have thought of it...

Having said that, I think that besides filming the story of a love that couldn't blossom, Ang Lee also made a movie about family. The shadow/theme of family was always there from the first conversation between the boys, about "their folks", to the last scene with Alma Jr. Oh and I liked the dinner scene when Jack claimed *his* family and put his father in law in his place.

Battlestar Galactica keeps holding my attention in spite of certain flaws. I wasn't impressed much by the previous episode, the Baltar-centric episode, although I like Baltar, but I enjoyed "Flesh and Bone". I think I liked it because of Leoben the Cylon that was interrogated by Starbuck (which makes little sense btw), and because of Boomer.
I must say that the theological conversations could be seen as getting old, one God vs gods, the mater of soul, and the Cylons promoting a Jewish-Christian-like religion (which was present in the old series too trough Adama the Patriarch, the idea of the 13 tribes, Exodus and the promise land...Earth) while the humans would be stuck in either "idolatry" or materialism (and Baltar could be a new Saul-Paul), but....I find it funny because #6 and Doral are actually behaving like Greek Gods on Caprica !

Of course they have a plan, and forced human race onto a journey, but they obviously like to play with the little humans too.

BTW walking among humans, in a human disguise was something Greek Gods used to do. Athena was always doing it. Maybe it's significant that there is no Athena in the new series...
No Cassiopeia either...unless there have planned to bring on some gorgeous human that would catch Baltar's fancy and therefore compete with # 6.

Leoben was intriguing, and a weird mix of Baltar's inner # 6, Caprica!Cylons and human beings, with a bit of Tiresias the seer. He embodied what Greeks called mêtis. For the first time, I really liked Kara.They are fleshing her character out, at last. Her final scene was touching.

Galactica!Boomer sounds more and more like Rachel from Blade Runner, and Baltar's Cylon-detecting technology calls to mind the test used by blade runners to unveil replicants. But it's Caprica!Boomer that is getting interesting, because she's becoming flesh and bone, she's falling from the Cylons Height, leaving the Olympia, for the love of Helo, becoming a suffering membrane between humans and gods. And that's Greek tragedy!

Yesterday at the opera, it was the show's first night, even though the mise-en-scène by Robert Wilson was actually a revival as he already staged Madame Butterfly in 1993, but with a new cast.

Pinkerton was mostly good, the Italian ténor was quite big and once more I was glad that I was far enough to forget his lack of sex-appeal (couldn't be worse than Tristan last year though), and Cio-Cio San was played by a young Chinese, Liping Zhang, who was a perfect Butterfly.

I really loved it. It was beautiful. First it's one of my favourite operas, my favourite from Puccini, and secondly I think that the mise-en-scène was spot-on. The music is so rich and so expressive, so Italian despite some subtle oriental motif, that you don't need a big décor or many props.

Everything on stage was actually very Japanese and very zen. It was bare, woody, and at the same time symbolically-charged and filled with the choregraphy, with the way singers slowly moved in their austere costumes. Lyricism lay in the voices, in the melodies.
For instance, when Cio-Cio San strews over the house with flowers to welcome her husband, there isn't any prop, because the flowers are in the music. And Butterfly doesn't need any sabre for her final sepuku.

It's funny because the procuction of La Bohème I saw on October was the opposite, but it suited that opera. You need details and realism, the picturesque, because it's part of the story...and it's a good distraction, because the love story is so corny!

Madame Butterfly is more powerful, and probably the most sad of Puccini's work. Cio-Cio San isn't a Mimi wearing kimono and she is not the silly victim of a misplaced love.
She's not an idiot, she's only 15 and she had to become geisha to support her family, but she's heard of another way to be and she wanna try personal happiness (a western notion!). So she took a chance when the marriage-broker picked her for the American man. She's brave, she faces her family's rejection and embraces Pinkerton's world , throwing herself into love, while keeping a few things from traditional Japan (the Ottoké for instance).
She contains and personifies the conflict of two civilizations, she's the suffering membrane (yeah again!) between them. And it's tearing her apart.
She wants to believe in love, in Pinkerton's promise, and tries to live in denial until the end. But she knew the risks and the love duet at the end of Act 1 showed it, and she understands quickly who the American woman is and what they want at Pinkerton's return.
Her fate is to end up pinned to a board.

Poor Butterfly.