Dance of the Damned

Movies: The Red Shoes, Fish Tank

This entry is about two films in which a character's passion for dancing is central to the plot. In one film, dancing destroys the character; in the other, it saves her.

The Red Shoes

This technicolor marvel, a clear ancestor and inspiration to Aronofsky's Black Swan, is an intense film about all-consuming passion. A young, ambitious ballerina, Vicky Page (Moira Shearer), becomes caught in the web of Boris Lermontov, the extremely demanding head of a ballet company. Lermontov promises to make Vicky a star--the prima donna ballerina of the world. But in return he demands that her entire life revolve around dance. In fact, he demands that her life be dance.


On the set of a production of The Red Shoes--a ballet based on a fairy tale by Hans Christen Anderson about a girl who falls in love with a pair of red dance shoes, only to find that she cannot remove them and the shoes force her to dance to her death, Vicky meets Julian Craster, a talented composer who Lermontov has also taken under his wing. As time goes by, the two fall in love, which is unacceptable to Lermontov. Despite his interference and attempts to thwart their relationship, Vicky and Julian are married and Vicky leaves the company...

...But The Red Shoes is not a film that shows love triumphant. In fact, it is a film that shows how two men unwittingly destroy a woman by demanding she give up her life for both of them. Julian's work doesn't allow for Vicky to dance--at least not at the level she is capable of. And though Lermontov could help Vicky blossom to full potential, he does not allow her room to follow any other passions--including romantic love.

SPOILERS AHEAD

The climax has the two men attempting to force Vicky to give up one of her passions for the other: Lermontov has offered to let her dance the lead in The Red Shoes once more, if only she will leave Julian. Julian tries to convince her to leave Lermontov's company for good and dance anywhere else. It seems as though Vicky chooses Lermontov: she walks towards the stage, visibly wracked with emotional pain. But her red shoes have another idea, and soon she is running to the balcony and throwing herself into the path of an oncoming train. A bit dramatic, yes, but emotionally effective.

/SPOILERS

Moira Shearer's performance as a woman torn between two men, both who want her body and heart completely, with no regard for the woman herself, is magnificent. Transcendent. The closeup shots of her face, covered in sweat or streaked with tears, make your heart break for her. She has, not surprisingly, an intensely physical performance, and she carries it off beautifully. Her body is less an object and more an instrument that conveys joy, agony, and insanity.

The Red Shoes is a visually stunning and emotionally intense film. In Black Swan, Natalie Portman plays a ballerina who becomes a prisoner of her own mind, with her perfectionism and hallucinations driving her to a mental breakdown. In The Red Shoes, Shearer is a prisoner of both external circumstances (Julian and Lermontov who both must have her) and her own heart.

5 out of 5 stars

Fish Tank

Andrea Arnold's film Fish Tank is equally visually beautiful and emotionally wrenching, but shows dance as an escape and a salvation for the heroine. Filmed in the slums of Essex, England, Fish Tank stars Katie Jarvis (an unknown when she was cast) as Mia, a poor 15 year old girl with an awful home life: Dad isn't in the picture, Mom is an immature drunk with boyfriends who come and go, and Sister is a a cigarette smoking, drinking 11 year old who calls Mia a "cunt". Yet, despite living in these dehumanizing conditions, Mia is a smart girl who qualifies for private boarding school and who has a secret passion...for hip-hop dancing. During the day she steals away to an abandoned apartment and dances to Nas, Ja Rule, and a bunch of other hip hop artists I'm not cool enough to know.

But Mia's life is thrown for a loop when Mom brings home a new guy, Connor (the devilishly sexy Michael Fassbender), who encourages Mia's dancing and acts half like a big brother and half like the really creepy, kinda flirty older man he is.



Fish Tank has two shocks. One you know is coming and the other you have no fucking idea. You can Wikipedia the movie is you want to spoil it, but I recommend just seeing the movie because it's an unbelievably fantastic film.

Through it all, Mia's love for dance allows her to have a focus within the chaos of her life. At the end of the film she makes a decision that potentially changes the course of her life and ends the movie on a hopeful note. Even though this decision doesn't relate directly to dancing, it's clear that this passion she has makes her realize that she is more than her used up mom and her shitty life in the projects. Hip hop dancing gives her something to hold to in less than ideal circumstances.

Fish Tank features many brave performances. Clearly, Michael Fassbender, whose performance as man who both helps a young girl and takes advantage of her, is a risk. My friend and I expressed exasperation at this film since Fassbender, being so damn attractive, is hard to hate even though he does some awful things. But it's that ambiguity--is he a good guy, or a bad guy?--that gives his performance a sense of realism. And Katie Jarvis, who was cast right off the street, has enough anger, and naivete, and passion to fill an entire tenement building.

I implore you, Readers, go out and find Fish Tank. It's not the kind of movie you see everyday.

5 out of 5 stars

My Cherie Amour

Movies: Goodbye First Love

Young love is as stupid and silly as it is hopeful and joyous. When you're 15 years old you have little to no experience coupled with raging hormones and complex, often overwhelming emotions. Rarely does anything feel right or comfortable at 15, including love.

Appropriately named director Mia Hansen-Love and wonderful young actors Lola Creton and Sebastian Urzendowsky give young love the respectful and honest portrayal it deserves in the film Goodbye First Love. Creton plays Camille and Urzendowsky plays Sullivan, two Parisian teenagers who are in the midst of a passionate relationship when Sullivan decides to drop out of high school and travel to South America for the better part of a year. Camille, at age 15, can't fathom Sullivan leaving her for such a long period of time. But Sullivan, at the wise age of 17, knows he is called to travel.



Creton and Urzendowsky play their parts with remarkable realism and empathy. Camille comes off as overbearing and mopey--sobbing at the thought of Sullivan leaving and, in the process, driving Sullivan even further away. Yet she also comes off as very sympathetic because who hasn't been through those feelings? It takes a long time to learn to let the people you care about do what they need to do without clinging to them for dear life. Hell, most adults haven't mastered it!

Sullivan's 10 months in South American turn into years, and Camille begins to move forward with her life: cutting her hair into a cute pixie and going to architecture school. Even as she begins to grow into herself, you can sense an emotional heaviness she continues to carry with her: melancholy defines Creton's lovely face. As the years go by, Camille begins a relationship with her much older professor (like, two decades plus), which makes sense despite being, in my mind, incredibly creepy. Camille clearly wants to grow up and get away from the sad-faced, crying little girl she was before. She is a sophisticated and very intelligent young woman, which makes her naturally drawn to an older, artistic man.

But as Camille's life becomes more stable, a chance encounter with Sullivan's mother brings the young man back into Camille's life--and this time it seems like Sullivan is the mopey, clinging one.

Goodbye First Love was a bit difficult for me to watch because the emotions are so real and potent without being melodramatic. I really understood Camille, with her immaturity and romantic, sensitive heart. And I felt a certain amount of anger at Sullivan who, despite being in the right about chasing after his own life, really jerks Camille around--both before he leaves and after he comes back. But neither Sullivan or Lorenz (the professor) are the center of this film. It's Camille's story and it's an uplifting, beautiful one because even as she messes up and makes questionable choices, you see her grow. The movie ends when she's about 23--still so young, with so much more to learn and with many more chances to have her heart broken and then love again. But it's beautiful because, just as Sullivan went on a physical and geographical journey, you can clearly see that Camille is on her own journey within herself.

4.5 out of 5 stars

We're All In This Together

Movies: Angels in America

In my Queer Cinema class, we're taking two class periods to watch the wonderful HBO miniseries Angels in America.

Based on Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize winning play, AiA is a beautiful, epic story that takes place in Reagan-era New York at the start of the AIDS crisis. One of the main characters, Prior Walter, is a gay man recently diagnosed with AIDS. His long time partner, Louis, leaves him because he (Louis) can't handle sickness. Depressed, abandoned, and sick, Prior is visited by an angel who claims that God has abandoned heaven. Although He created both angels and human, God fell deeply in love with His lesser creation--humankind--and their ability to move, travel, explore, and progress (whereas the angels sit around heaven and just have sex all the time--true story). So God leaves heaven and the angels want Prior to serve as a prophet to tell humans to "stop moving"--stop progressing, stop inventing, stop exploring. And maybe God will come back.

Still with me? Meanwhile, Roy Cohn, a real-life ultra-conservative lawyer, is trying to get his protege, squeaky-clean Mormon (and secretly gay) Joe Pitt, to take a position in Washington, DC that might help Roy fight his impending disbarment. As Joe is faced with this predicament--doing a not-so-legal favor for a mentor and friend--he finds his marriage to pill-popping, depressed housewife Harper falling apart. Also, Joe starts seeing Louis--the one who left Prior.

Oh, also Roy Cohn has AIDS. But he's calling it liver cancer because men like him--men with "clout"--don't get AIDS.

Still with me?

The fantastical aspects of the story--Harper's hallucinations and Prior's visits from angels and dead relatives--serve as metaphors for a time when AIDS was a new, terrifying disease. Whereas I was born and grew up in a world in which AIDS was an accepted reality and condom use, for my generation, was as mandatory as seat belt use--you just don't ride without one--people who were born into a world without AIDS had to come to grips with the fact that sex now had the potential to kill in a way not seen since there has been a cure for syphilis.

At first some called it the "gay plague". Gay men and drug users got AIDS in higher numbers than heterosexual people and non-users. How perfect this was for people out there constantly looking for more reasons to hate gay people. It was now God's punishment! Or nature's punishment for so-called deviancy. But as the number of AIDS victims increased and we learned more about the virus, it became clear that we were all in this together. Being straight doesn't protect you from AIDS. Sickness and disease affects all of us, even if we are not sick ourselves.

Back to Kushner's play: Angels in America has a diverse cast. Some characters are black, others are white. There are Jews and Mormons. There are gay people and straight people. There are women and men. The play and the series cast women in some male roles and almost all the main actors play one or more supporting characters as well. This casting emphasizes human interconnectedness and flexibility in gender and race.

I love this play because few pieces of art or writing capture what I feel is my outlook on life so perfectly. One message of the play is that "the world only spins forward", as Prior says. While the play most certainly vilifies Reagan-era conservative politics (and Reagan himself), I think the real demon in AiA is unwillingness to accept change and to move forward. In the play, refusing to move forward is tantamount to death, as Prior discovers. Even Roy Cohn, savior of the Right, berates Joe when he refuses to "play the game" of life (by illegally helping Roy). He says to Joe, "This is the game of being alive. You think you're above being alive? Above being alive is, what? Dead."

As difficult as change is, it's the only reality out there. There are no "good old days" and nor are there "bad old days", There are just days gone by, with good and bad aspects to them. And days to come, and what we can collectively make of them.

The message of interconnectedness is important to me as well. I've attended a number of churches on and off throughout my life (although, honestly, not venturing much beyond mainstream Protestantism. The "Frozen Chosen" as they say), and I am coming to realize that if a religion or any system of belief does not promote empathy and kindness, it is worthless to me. In fact, it is less than worthless--it's harmful. Too often, people use religion (or politics, or social beliefs) to put up barriers and mark lines between themselves and "others". And usually those "others" are the bad guys or, perhaps even worse, the Ones We Pity. The ones we pray for not because we care, but because by doing the praying we are assuring ourselves, "it's good that I'm not that person".

We want to build ourselves up. This is natural. But at the end of the day, we're all in this together. This world of violence and illness and agony--no one is spared in the end. Money can delay death, but it can't buy eternal life. Money doesn't prevent heartbreak. Money doesn't make you better than anyone else. In fact, it often makes you worse. Beauty fades, and can be ripped away in an instant. Youth inevitably goes away--unless you die young. Even relationships and friendships often come to an unwanted end.

So what stays? What is worthwhile to have? Connection. Mercy. Empathy. Love. Generosity. These things build up inside yourself and, when expressed, expand into the world. You can't heal a friend who has cancer, but you can love her. You can't always get a raise you want, or find the perfect partner, or be the perfect child--but you can cultivate a kindness and a character in yourself that no one can take away. And when no one will stand up for you, you will have the tools to stand up for yourself. This isn't something you can buy or be given by someone else.

In Angels in America, no character is perfectly good or perfectly evil. Even the villainous Roy Cohn has moments of dignity and humanity. And even the good or heroic characters screw up. I like this because this is real. People aren't monsters. Even so-called "monsters"--pedophiles, rapists, sociopaths--aren't entirely monsters. They're made of the same stuff as everyone else. And, likewise, heroes always have moments of shame and weakness. It's hard not to judge others--I do it all the time. But consider the context of another's life and history. A person can be just in their assessment of someone else while still acknowledging that person's basic humanity. And don't forget--we're all in this together. It could be you who is in need of understanding or forgiveness someday.

If you know me in real life, you know that I have kind of a mantra of sorts: "Only connect". From a passage in E.M. Forster's novel Howards End, I've used this phrase during job interview presentations and even as a handle on a dating website. Why does this phrase stick with me? I'm not the most extroverted person in the world. I've had few long-term romantic relationships, and I've most definitely had friendships fall by the wayside many times. Why should I speak for the values of connection? I just feel that there's no value in refusing to try to understand the "other". I don't see why and how a person could look at the world and see nothing but black and white, when it's so empirically clear to me that it's almost all gray area.

But we persist in building walls and in categorizing and demonizing. We forget that we aren't any better than the next guy. Or, if we are better, it's only in some specific way--and in some other way, he is better than us. Just like with the AIDS crisis, we want to see people unlike ourselves as dirty or wrong or sick on some level, but we forget that we look dirty and sick and wrong to others.

Let's forget these differences for a while. Let's remember that we're all in this together--no one's getting out alive, so we may as well help each other and care for each other as much as possible through life. Let's connect.

5 out of 5 stars