Take a little time to hold yourself

If there's love just feel it.

I won't let you go.

Dont' tell me what's it all about

What do you get when you fall in love?
A guy with a pin to burst your bubble.

Monday,monday...

Cine Me

The Imitation Game

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2084970/

http://theimitationgamemovie.com/

How odd that “The Imitation Game,” one of the more rousingly entertaining crowd-pleasers coming out this year—as endorsed by its People’s Choice Award at the Toronto film festival—also happens to be one of the most devastatingly sad. 

On one hand, this is a tense World War II thriller about a stellar team of Brits who cracked Nazi Germany’s Enigma code. The movie boasts its own inspirational rallying cry, repeated three times in case you miss it, which would be perfect for embossing on a holly-bedecked greeting card: “Sometimes, it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one imagines.”

On the other hand, it is an examination of the tragic circumstances that befell Alan Turing, the film’s central hero, who brings victory to the Allies by inventing a revolutionary machine that would give birth to the computer age. He would later be publicly vilified and savagely punished for engaging in homosexual activity, which was criminalized in England at the time, before committing suicide in 1954.

Instead of being festooned with a chest full of medals, the closeted genius who saved countless lives by significantly shortening the war was cruelly subjected to chemically-induced castration in lieu of jail time. And, because much of the details were kept classified for 50 years, few knew of the extent of his wartime feats, even though he was awarded the Order of the British Empire for his services in 1945. He was officially pardoned of his offenses by Queen Elizabeth in 2013—a case of too little too late.

This atypical biopic about the brilliant, impossibly arrogant and socially awkward mathematician (played by Benedict Cumberbatch, impeccably perfect in every way) is a somewhat hard read at first. Most likely, it was the intent of screenwriter Graham Moore to make a puzzle out a film about puzzle solving. That is not necessarily a bad thing, however, once the pieces fall into in place. The fractured narrative starts off as a mystery in 1951 with a detective investigating a burglary at Turing’s home where, strangely, nothing was stolen. Eventually, the plot flashes back to 1928 and shifts into a heart-breaking love story as a teen Turing, a brutally bullied school-boy prodigy, chastely falls for a fellow classmate named Christopher.

But “The Imitation Game” is most on its game when it primarily sticks to being a John le Carre-lite espionage version of “Revenge of the Nerds,” beginning in 1939 as it introduces a battleground of the mind that relies on superior intellect rather than bombs to beat the enemy. Norwegian director Morten Tyldum in his English-language debut provides just enough science to explain what is at stake while escalating the beat-the-clock tension involved in the mission conducted by Turing and a handful of other high-IQ cohorts. Alexandre Desplat’s hauntingly propulsive score further enhances the suspense while capturing the gravity of the situation.

Matters turn slightly hokey as the final solution to Enigma code relies on several “By Jove, I’ve got it” revelations. But, by then, you will likely be fully invested in the outcome, no matter how out of left field it might seem. Some of Cumberbatch’s most affecting work is when the older and close-to-defeated Turing is at the end of his rope, unable to even focus on a crossword puzzle because of the drugs he has been given. But as I sit here typing away, I realize I have Turing to thank for being able to access a wealth of information with just a few key strokes and a click of a mouse.

Not only did Turing help save the world, he continues to influence it every day.

For decades, the name of Turing was familiar only to mathematicians and historians of computing, while that of Bletchley was overgrown; the brambles of official secrecy thrive especially well in Britain. Now we know almost too much. Bletchley, where the Allies deciphered enemy communications, has become a museum; you can tour the hut, recently restored, in which Turing and his colleagues toiled. His life has been probed onstage—Derek Jacobi played him in “Breaking the Code” (1986), in London and on Broadway—and subjected to the rummaging of biographers. When Barack Obama addressed Parliament, in 2011, the three British scientists he lauded were Newton, Darwin, and Turing, and the centenary of Turing’s birth, in 2012, ignited a year of celebrations. His head was on a stamp.  

“The Imitation Game” is directed by Morten Tyldum and adapted by Graham Moore from “Alan Turing: The Enigma,” Andrew Hodges’s detailed study from 1983. Hodges was neither the first nor the last to leap with glee upon that final word. Enigma was the name of the German cipher machine, which encoded messages dispatched to the armed forces. The breaking of those codes, widely considered impossible, was achieved in part—or, if you believe this movie, pretty much solely—by Turing, who designed his own machine, a thing of great beauty and ingenuity known as a Bombe, to quicken his task. Turing was also gay, at a time when homosexual acts were a criminal offense. After the war, in 1952, he was arrested for indecency, convicted, and offered “chemical castration” instead of prison. He took the former.

You could argue, rightly, that movies aren’t made for wonks. Still, it’s hard to justify the blank space where Turing’s end should be. He died of cyanide poisoning; a half-eaten apple was found beside his bed; and he had long been fascinated by “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” How could a movie director, of all people, not make something of that? Tyldum builds up to it, with scenes of Turing messing about with cyanide and handing out apples at work, but the payoff is missing. Here, in short, is a film about a highly intelligent homosexual mathematician that shows no homosexual behavior, almost no math, and a faltering faith in the intelligence of its viewers. So, what is there to tempt us?

What's with the fascination in 2014 about World War II? This is the best of three very good films and looks at the invention of the computer by an unusual cast of characters. 

Cumberbatch's performance is riveting, but Knightley deserves credit for doing it backwards and in heels, so to speak. In fact, Clarke probably deserves her own biopic as one of the few female practitioners of the code-breaking art.

Cine Me

Miss Julie

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2667960/

August Strindberg felt that the entire world had gone crazy. The "norms" of class hierarchies and gender roles were starting to shatter, and he saw chaos pouring into that vacuum. His 1888 play "Miss Julie" is the prime example, although it's evident in all of his other disturbing, great modern works. "Miss Julie" plays in almost real-time, taking place in one setting over the course of a single evening, Midsummer Night's Eve, the one long night of the year when the classes blend together, when rich dance and drink with poor, when the boundaries have blurred. There are only three characters in the play, and it opens with Jean, an upwardly-striving valet remarking to his pal and sort-of girlfriend, the kitchen maid, that "Miss Julie is crazy!" Miss Julie is the daughter of the count in whose manor they both work. 

When Liv Ullmann's "Miss Julie" works best, it shows us that total emotional and social chaos, chaos that destroys not only the individual characters in the play, but the entire society in which they live. "Miss Julie" is a rather strange experience, with its consistently static medium shots of the three actors, as they roar their lines at one another. But it has an undeniable power. For Strindberg to work, one must feel the context of his time, and understand Miss Julie's immediate ruination by "falling" for the valet (the script is filled with images of rising and falling).

Ullmann's adaptation of Strindberg's script stays very close to the original; the main change being that it now takes place on an estate in Ireland. Ullmann opens up the action only slightly, with the reveling Midsummer Night's Eve crowds always offstage, heard but never seen. There are a couple of scenes in Jean's bedroom, and one outdoor scene when Jean and Miss Julie take a walk. Other than that, the action stays in the kitchen, suggesting how much Miss Julie is "lowering" herself by hanging out there. The claustrophobia of the kitchen is overwhelming in the film, and the shots of Miss Julie wandering through the manor by herself, her posture broken and stiff, her dress falling off her shoulder, give us a welcome (and yet rivetingly disturbing) change of scene.

As Miss Julie breaks down, Chastain is, quite frankly, extraordinary. She gathers her considerable powers and pours them into a role that is different from anything else she has ever done. It's a powerhouse performance, without any self-congratulatory or self-indulgent giveaways. Her agony is so palpable that one wonders how she will survive her own performance. Feeling that way is essential for "Miss Julie" to work, and from Chastain's unforgettable first entrance, sidling into the kitchen, looking like a wreck, the crack in her psyche is already clearly visible on her face.

Farrell is terrific as Jean, playing around with Miss Julie at first, following her seemingly heedless orders to kiss her shoe, despite what it might look like to others, and despite the fact that he is in a relationship with Kathleen. He warns her at one point that by flirting with him, she is playing with fire. He's not to be trifled with. He is a man trapped in his social station, although he is representative of the movement between the classes, a valet who has traveled the world with his Master, knows about good wines (although he steals a bottle on occasion), speaks other languages, and has an ease in the world that Miss Julie lacks. And yet when the Master rings the bell for him, his loyalty sways automatically towards the man he serves. He is in deep conflict, and the fact that Miss Julie falls so hard for him shows that she is just as "low" as he is. His lust turns to contempt in a devastating heartbeat. Farrell manages all of this gracefully and sensitively, as though he were born to play the role. It's a great fit.

Ullmann fills the score with mournful Schubert and Bach, familiar pieces of music that become thematic, as opposed to mere pretty background.

Reaction to the film will depend on how one feels about seeing three people stand around delivering lines at one another. But the acting is so good it creates its own mood, outside of anything cinematic that Ullmann could have chosen to add to it; it creates its own atmosphere of claustrophobia, hysteria, and self-loathing. Ullmann, a brilliant actress herself, hands the script over to her actors. It is theirs. 

It’s taken close to 15 years for her to return to the director’s chair, followed by months of speculation once news of production hit, but Liv Ullmann finally unveiled her new film at the Toronto International Film Festival. “Miss Julie,” the infamous play by August Strindberg, adapted for the screen and stage in multiple countries and languages, gets an Anglophone interpretation from the legendary Norwegian actress. This version is set in Ireland and stars a trio of familiar faces: Jessica Chastain, Colin Farrell, and Samantha Morton. The film has all the makings of a special occasion: the return of Ullmann, the continuation of the "Chastainaissance," Colin Farrell in a respectable film again. It’s no surprise that we were swept up in all the excitement .

It’s toxic, it’s hypnotic, and passionately translates Strindberg’s genius instinct for enlightening the multi-layered psychological spectrums of human desire for lust and power. 

It’s unforgettable in every sense of the word.

Anywhere I go you go,my dear

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

e.e. cummings

And I would still be on my feet

 

 

 

 

I remember that time you told me
"Love is touching souls"

Surely you touched mine
'Cause part of you pours out of me
In these lines from time to time
Oh, you're in my blood like holy wine
Taste so bitter and so sweet

Oh I could drink a case of you darling
And I would still be on my feet
I would still be on my feet