Harrison, TX

(59E59, 18 August 2012)

In provinces, one excels by doing well in the game. In big cities, one excels by changing the game. For some, it is best to accept the game and to master one's strategy, instead of being a perpetual amateur player in an ever-evolving game that no one else wishes to join. With the rules of the game well defined, the game itself becomes a character, in provinces.

In the "Blind Date," individuals crave others' company, not others' individuality. And they know it and accept it.

"The Midnight Caller" advocates individualism. Ultimately, for everyone's good, one ought to act selfishly, and let another exercise his choice, as this exercise cannot be forestalled, but only delayed, at a cost for all.

One needs partners in play; one does not need particular individuals---most of the time. Yet, one is not deterred from electing someone specific to be that partner, and craving this someone specific, thus denying the power of abstraction.

The key to contentment is to pride oneself on having solved a constrained optimisation problem.

Smuin Ballet

(Joyce Theater, 18 August 2012)

The dancers' movements lack inevitability. They convey the ambition to succeed at ballet, instead of conveying ideas that admit no means of expression other than ballet. The movements lack amplification through resonance with music, and through weight and momentum transfers between dancers. Thus emerges not a conversation but a show, deliberately choreographed, competently danced, but neither superhuman, as elite classical ballet can be, nor super human, as a ballet by a smaller company has no choice but to be.

The dancers are more comfortable using the classical ballet vocabulary in the "Medea" (an illustration for a borrowed story) than jogging through the "Oh, Inverted World," which, even though premiered in 2010, comes across as conceived in 1980s, not least because of the puerile costumes. In these two ballets, the intensity of the dancers' sexuality is curtailed by their haphazardly revealing costumes, which obfuscate the intention of the movement, instead of accentuating that intention.

The third, redeeming, romantic, piece "Soon These Two Worlds" suits the company's character, which seeks to gratify and cheer.

Le Dernier Métro (1980)

A film does not merely tell a story. It constructs a world into which one is drawn. It teaches how to construct a world of one's own.

Le Dernier Métro culminates in a compromise. It does not strive towards ideals that could be mixed at will. Instead, it offers a ready-made mixture, a dignified resignation, along with a manual spelt out in prose. It is a child conceived to be as old as its parent, now gone.

Hedda Gabler

(Court House Theatre, 27 July 2012)

The play is an argument for a social order in which there is no one to blame but oneself.

Powerless, one seeks the environment whose safety is signalled by its natural beauty. Free, one strives for the perfection that is man-made beauty. Obsession with beauty is thus found at the extremes, in desperation and in inspiration.

Humans enslave themselves to ideas or, more commonly, other humans. A well-designed society at least ought to provide one with the freedom to choose what or who to enslave oneself to.

Death in Venice (1971)

Into the visual mumblecore, arrives a mute protagonist afflicted by unmerited boredom, corrected by means of a belated departure, on the islands populated by the refugees unblemished by the Renaissance, sitting out the Industrial Revolution.

Wild Strawberries (1957)

Art typically evokes emotions, which then trigger intellectual response. By contrast, Bergman's picture, devoid of emotion, just reasons. Interpretations age faster than dreams.

Bergman's understated tone promotes Ingrid Thulin, whose looks require little acting upon and little backstory, and Gunnar Björnstrand, an actor.

The characters in need of transformation are dead, so one settles for their alteration instead.

To Rome with Love (2012)

Woody Allen does not base his movies on true stories. Much that is worth knowing about life does not present itself as a story. Besides, one does not need to deal in facts when one's ambition is to inspire the audience to depart from the received life stories.

Realism convinces by deception. Allenism seeks consenting audience. It then speaks to one in seven, as good poetry does, appearing foreign to the remaining six, but never insincere.

Not to be intense is not to be. One can be more if offset by an appropriate hue of red.