Elke Naters, 1999

Nach Königinnen hat Elke Naters gleich noch einen Roman rausgehauen, Lügen. Auch hier geht es wieder um zwei beste Freundinnen, die sich in der hohen Kunst des manipulativen nicht-miteinander-Sprechens ("Ich wähle ihre Nummer, um zu sehen, ob sie zu Hause ist. Wenn sie rangeht, lege ich auf." - "Früher hat Be oft die Tür nicht aufgemacht, obwohl sie z Hause war.") üben. Ich dachte immer, das wäre so eine Teenager-Sache, die sich mit Anfang 20 auswächst. Aber offensichtlich ist das auch für 27-jährige noch ein Thema. Zumindest für die 27-jährigen Ausgeburten einer 36-jährigen Jungliteratinnen-Phantasie. Schnarch.

Immerhin bemüht sich Naters diesmal um küchenpsychologische Figurenzeichnung ("Be belügt sich also ständig selber. Weil Be ausschließlich mit sich selbst beschäftigt ist, käme es ihr gar nicht in den Sinn, andere zu belügen, weil ihre Wahrnehmung gar nicht so weit reicht."), eine Handlung und einen ordentlichen Schuss Lebensweisheiten ("Das, was ich aus siebenundzwanzig Jahren als Erkenntnis für mein Leben herausgefiltert habe, läuft als Werbeslogan für ein Shampoo.").

So richtig Handlung gibt es, als sich Augustas beste Freundin Be in eine Lesbe verliebt und Augusta infolgedessen ein bisschen zu sich selbst findet - und vielleicht sogar noch einen Mann - und vielleicht sogar diesen ganzen manipulativen, kompetitiven beste-Freundinnen-Krampf ablegen will ("Dann könnte ich einen Freund haben und zwei Freundinnen, und wir hätten eine Menge Spaß und viel zu lachen, bis an unser Lebensende. Das wäre mal schön.").

Warum es ausgerechnet eine lesbische Liebesgeschichte sein muss, die hier die Katharsis herbeiführt, ist mir allerdings nicht ganz klar. Auf jeden Fall dient diese Konstellation dazu, dass die Hauptfigur endlich einmal ihre gesamten Ängste und ihren Selbsthass geballt ausleben kann. Das Bild von der "fetten fiesen Lesbe", mit der Augusta selbst Sex haben muss, wird zwar in die Traumwelt verbannt. Aber alles, alles was mit der netten Lesbe Petra ("Pit") zusammenhängt, ist einfach schrecklich, anstrengend und beängstigend: der Hund, das komische Essen, das schmale Bett mit Plumeau, das Kindsheitstraumata weckt, der Schnee, der Mangel an Bier ... Wir sagen das jetzt nicht explizit, aber GUT ist das nicht mit den Lesben.

Am Ende führt natürlich genau das konspirative Gespräch mit Pit zur Selbsterkenntnis (aber wie echt die ist, sieht man ja gleich am Vergleich mit der Shampoo-Werbung). Und ganz am Ende kriegt Augusta auch Peter ab, den Bruder von Pit. Die küchenpsychologische Lesung dieser Wendung spare ich mir an dieser Stelle allerdings lieber. Brrr.

Auch bei Lügen möchte man hoffen, dass hier Gesellschaft zumindest karakiert wird. Aber dann ist da noch diese dramaturgisch völlig überflüssige Szene mit der Wiederaufnahme von Augustas Studium und ihrer Magisterarbeit. Das bringt rein gar nichts, beantwortet nur meine Frage, was diese Frauen eigentlich hauptberuflich tun, die nichts arbeiten, viel saufen, den ganzen Tag frei haben und Factory Outlet Gucci tragen.

Naters nutzt die Situation geschickt aus, um solides literatur- und filmwissenschaftliches Grundwissen zu demonstrieren und über Film und die Wichtigkeit des Lesens an sich mal ordentlich philosophisch zu werden. Vielleicht als Antwort auf meine Frage, was fürn Selbstverständnis und welchen Hintergrund Enddreissigerinnen haben, die sowas schreiben. Egal. Jedenfall gibt das dem Ganzen schon wieder den Anschein, als hätte hier jemand tief in die autobiografische Kiste gegriffen. Und auch an dieser Stelle will ich mir die küchenpsychologiesche Lesung lieber sparen.

Next Stop: Judith Hermanns Sommerhaus, später. Da freu ich mich schon drauf.

norton.commander.productions - Solaris (after Stanislav Lem) - Mousonturm Frankfurt, Feb 24 2005.

Nun habe ich Lem nicht gelesen. Das mag ganz allgemein ein Fehler sein. Aber ich frage mich, ob die intime Kenntnis der Buchvorlage nicht vielleicht zwingende Voraussetzung für den ungetrübten Genuss der norton.commander.productions Produktion gewesen wäre.

Die Bühne ist schwarz, mit rundlichen Hütten, die als Schattenwände und Projektionsflächen dienen. Fluoriszierende Streifen an Kanten und auf dem Boden. Gebündelte Taschenlampenstrahlen (Licht wird auch als Waffe eingesetzt). Videofilmchen. Und eine Handvoll durchaus bekannter Schauspieler, die professionell und routiniert ihre Texte hersagen - soweit sie nicht als Soundbytes vom Band kommen.

Soweit, so optisch ansprechend. Dazu wird ganz zeitgemäß auf Erzähler oder zentrale Perspektiven verzichtet. Die Zuschauerin wird in die düstere und träge Atmosphäre von Solaris eingetaucht und darf sich dann al gusto selbst zurechtfinden und sich den einen oder anderen Reim machen.

Nur leider spricht der Inhalt so gar nicht an (von Aufrütteln oder so ganz zu schweigen). Diese Angst vor Neutrinos, Klonen und Selsbt-Verlust ist 10 Jahre dated. Und die Produktion versucht gar nicht erst, zeitgemäße Ängste zu substituieren.

Vielleicht aber, vielleicht, war das ganze als multimedialer Bilderbogen für Solaris-Fans gedacht. Als Illustration bester Quotes. Als Trip durch Szenen mit Kult-Charakter. Ein bisschen wie Star Trek Convention, aber nur ein paar dre Teilnehmer sind im Gewand. Vielleicht hätte es geholfen, das Buch zu kennen, und man hätte sich gemütlich im Wiedererkennungseffekt suhlen können. So aber war's recht langweilig. Trotz Hund.

Und so war das erste Geräusch aus dem Publikum, zwischen Erkennen, dass es nun tatsächlich vorüber ist, und höflichem Applaus, ein langer, erlöster Seufzer.

Ein Wort noch zum Restaurant im Mouson-Turm: 5 Minuten von der Location ist die Berger Straße, voll mit Kneipen, Bars, Restaurants und Cafes mit einer realistischen Chance, zeitnah, freundlich und kompetent bedient zu werden.

Elke Naters, 1998

Königinnen von Elke Naters ist ein netter kleiner Roman (oder so), der sich wegliest wie nix. Im unverbindlichen Plauderton erzählen Marie und Gloria über Typen, Klamotten und ihre Freundschaft und bleiben dabei so brav an der Oberfläche, dass die geneigte Leserin sich entspannt in dieses wohlige Überlegensheitsgefühl fallen lassen kann, das nurdie konsensfähige Gesellschaftssatire bieten kann.

Nur, dass sich Naters so flüssig und selbstverständlich (man mag fast "natürlich" sagen) in diesem Plunzen-Jargon bewegt, dass man den Verdacht bekommt, sie karikiert gar nicht, sie schreibt frei Schnauze über die urbane 30erin der späten 90er Jahre. Über sich selbst. Junge deutsche Literatur eben. Immerhin ist dabei etwas rausgekommen, das ein durchaus etablierter Verlag als "Roman" verlegt. Damit hat man eine moralisch wesentlich bessere Position als wenn man keine Romane schreibt und nur das Geschreibe anderer verreißt.

Und wenn man sich vorgenommen hat, dieses Jahr ein Kontingent von X Büchern zu lesen, ist man mit solchen Romanen natürlich vorne dran. Gut, dass U. mir einen ganzen Stapel davon dagelassen hat ...

"Rasenmähen ist dem Schweden seine große Leidenschaft."

UK/USA 2004, dir. Marc Forster

The other day, I've been to the movies with quite a stranger. Over drinks afterwards, in this somewhat strained grappling for conversation, we tried to talk favorite movies - and I couldn't, for the life of me, remember mine. That's kind of frightening - after all I've written up almost every movie I've seen, here in Flickwerk, since November 2001.

Finding Neverland, now, is one of the movies that you walk out of thinking, this is certainly on my movie-top-list. But I don't quite know why. The whole audience was sobbing in the end - loudly. And I don't quite know why.

Of course, I love Peter Pan. The boy who cannot tell a kiss from a thimble. Of couse, I love Johnny Depp. And if there's no god, who's given us Kate Winslet? But that alone can't be it.

N. calls Finding Neverland "old school". Traditional narrative, easy on the eye, beautifully equipped, no gore, not strong language. All the ingredients needed to qualify as "lame". The plot is only hinted at, the love-story(s), the crises. Looking back, I'm not quite sure *what* the film was all about.

Then, there's the reality-distraction I already stumbled over in The Aviator. The film is, after all, about J.M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, about his non-marriage, his non-affair, and the family that seems to have inspired Peter Pan. Little attempt to shed light on this man's psyche. But the vague hints at (mis?)interpretations of his involvement with the lost boys were enough to make one awkward about the film's biographical ambitions. Telling the truth about James got in the way of telling the truth about - what?

There's the love-story. But the whole Barrie-character was set up to be so asexual and so autistic, in a way, that the love-story did not really carry. Depp as Barrie was aloof, dreamy, naive, and stumbling along in his thick Scottish accent. Barrie was the boy who never wanted to grow up. Or rather, the boy who grew up too early and, as an adult, was still grown up in a way old children are. Though I suspect that what the audience cried about, unisono, was not Barrie's lost childhood but the unconsummate love-affair and the death of Slyvia (Kate W.)

What did I cry about, then?

Possibly about the faith in imagination that suffuses the film. The Barrie-character is so enviably able to believe in his make-believe, just as children get completely lost in the games they play, while adults seem to always keep the game-ness in mind. I can see why Barrie loosend up so with the kids - performing for kids makes you so invisible to the adult world. Trying out every swing in the playground is so much harder on your adult own.

The movie's highlight is when Barrie brings his imagined world to the sick-bed of Sylvia Llewelyn Davies and this small infusion of imagination serves to turn everything around - bitter mothers, traumatized kids, and even dying Sylvia. It's as if a bit a storytelling could really change the world.

Big Fish, I think, tried something similar - and belly-flopped where Neveland soars, on strings, not fairy-dust, mind you, but it soars.

USA 2003, dir. Tim Burton

Big Fish could have been magic. Or poetic. The trailers were promising.

But the film was exceptionally dully. Classical father-and-son stuff. The father believes in the power of narrative, the son is more soberly minded, embarrassed by his father who's permanently away - on sale-trips or lost in memory.

The father's story is magical enough, but somehow lacking in poignancy, a traditional, unbroken fairytale populated by fairytale characters. The lad who works seven years to gain his loved one's love. The lad who fights the end-level enemy which is, in the end, a metaphor of the shoal of his own life.

Most disappointing: in the end, at the father's funeral, everything turns out to have been the truth, none of the grand stories a lie, none of the fairytale characters invented. The father's imagination wins - but only because it's the truth.

I don't even want to analyse this on the back of concurrent US politics.

Antje Ravic Strubel, 2001

Ein sprödes kleines Buch. Und eins, für das ich keine englischen Worte finde. Obwohl es sich zweisprachig gibt. Oder nicht?

Christiane, Leah, Jo, die Hauptfiguren, sind auch Deutschland nach New York gekommen, eine aus dem Osten, die andere, etwas später, aus dem Westen. Vorgeblich pendeln sie sprachlich zwischen Deutsch und Englisch, faktisch ist das Buch durchgehend deutsch. Bis auf die Kapitelnummern, die sind in Englisch. Dabei wechselt die mysteriöse Christiane/ Jo in einer der wichtigsten Szenen vom Englischen ins Deutsche.

Dies in Deutsch beschrieben zu lesen wirkt ein wenig wie der verzweifelte Versuch, in der platten Lokalisierung von Gabriel Knight 2 - The Beast Within Gabriels deutsches Radebrechen und sein fließendes Englisch auf Deutsch wiederzugeben. Night on Earth ist immer noch nicht im Print angekommen.

Offene Blende handelt vom Fotografieren - und lässt sich gut mit Plato's Cave parallel lesen. Offene Blende handelt auch vom Theater. Und liest sich wie ein Drehbuch. Ein Skript. Ein Scribble.

Ravic Strubel beschreibt wer wo ist, sich bewegt, wie das Setting aussieht, wer was sagt. Aus den verschiedenen Perspektiven der verschiedenen zentralen Figuren. Ein bisschen wie free ubiquitous camera. Sie spart sich allwissende Einsichten. Aber auch alle Emotionen. Das Buch beschreibt wer wo ist, alles drumrum muss man sich denken. Wie scaffolding.

Man kann der Autorin aber durchaus zugute halten, dass sie sich einen DIN A Lesbenroman verkniffen hat. Es mögen zwei Frauen sein, aber hier knallen vor allem zwei Geschichten aufeinander. Zwei unkennbare, unverstehbare Geschichten, von denen man nur die Gerüste und Verschalungen erkennen kann. Alles andere muss man sich zusammeninterpretieren - oder es als sinnlos gleich lassen. Entsprechend wird auf ein Happy End verzichtet, das aber ganz entspannt.

Ein seltsames Buch, aber OK, soweit.

USA 2004, dir. Martin Scorsese

Now, that's what I call a nice movie. Though I'd expected the worst. An - let's admit it - ageing Leonardo di trying his best (or worst) to act like a dashing young Leonardo di (whom I've never been to fond of to begin with). But the movie was really pretty beautiful. Perfect pitch, perfect timng. And the colors.

The early scenes appear just so slightly hand-colored. And then, when the character of Katherine Hepburn comes in, the whole screen turns to blueish grays and orangey browns. And anyway, Cate Blanchett as Kate Hepburn. I've heard the raves. But I sat open-mouthed for four full minutes, anyway. I felt myself gaping, But I just could not stop. Though slightly overdone, the presence of this character was amazing - and so un-Blanchett-ey. And I wouldn't have wanted to see (hear!) a dubbed version of this one for the world.

The story-line worried me a bit, though. Reality dripping in. I mean, they were (apparently) exposing the life and neuroses of a real person here. I just didn't manage to see the symbolic value in this film, a story of Hollywood, a story of America, a story of love, or simply the disquieting portrait of a man drenched in neuroses. The whole film was so lovingly done, respectfully and tender. Made one wonder if the greatest tenderness toward its subject wouldn't have been not to tell the story at all.

And, agck, reducing the neuroses and breakdowns to the sad after-effects of an over-protecting mother. So not needed.

But Yay for the H-1 racer plane soaring in its seamless silver glory and YAY for the H-1 racer plane ploughing the fleshy red from the dull blue-gray of the beetplot to orchestral music that - I blush to admit - I mistook for a little Bach.

USA 2004, dir. M. Night Shyamalan

The Village got released on DVD the other day and like the theatre version before it, they flog the DVD as "horror".

The Village is not a horror-flicks. It's a movie about fear. A very Amercian movie about fear. Not in the sense of "Hollywood movie". Perhaps a movie about a very American sort of fear. And a bit like Blair Witch Project in certain ways.

A bunch of traumatized American citizents, survivors of violent acts against loved ones, withdraw into a closed-off wildlife preservation area and start living like it's 1899. The good olde days when America was still innocent. Splendid isolation. And a new Canaan.

But a community without a threat from outside threatens to fall apart. Sallust knew this when he wrote Catilina. And it's the same story we've heard after the "end" of the "cold war". What the founders of the village, the elders, do is they invent an external threat. Monsters. "Those we don't speak abou" Who are said to maim and kill. Who walk the woods growling, dressed in red robes and keep the villagers inside a close perimeter marked in yellow.

The first minutes of the film may be reminiscent of the horror genre, but it's really all about fear, how fear causes more fear and how fear is used as a means of control. Only for the best of the community, of course. But one starts to wonder how good this best can be. How many sacrifices there need be. And what sort of violence it is to lock ones past, but also, it appears, onces desires and dreams in small black boxes.

All the elder villagers have sad stories of loss to tell. They emigrated from the modern world to avoid every getting hurt again. But they also lock away their feelings in order not to get hurt again. Not for nothing do the monsters wear a jolly red, the villagers are bily yellow.

There's a love-story, too. And in the end, love manages to reap a small victory without destroying teh petri dish.

In the end, the Good dictated by the few will always be oppressive. And the love-story entirely within the narrow bounds dictated by the C19 motive chosen by the elders. And that's, at the end of the day, quite horrible, too.

Susan Sontag, 1977

The perfect companion to R. Barthes' Camera lucida. Five of the essays in this collection are rather more specific, dealing with certains aspects of modern (American) photography or individual photographers. But the first essay, "In Plato's Cave" is simply amazing. With an easy hand, Sontag analyzes the cultural and political implications of the act of photography and the supremacy of the still image in modern culture.

Her analyses go well beyond Barthes' studium and punctum and I think Closer might have been a less lame movie has someone from the crew read some Sontag and inriched the character of Anna.

To collect photographs is to collect the world.

To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge - and, therefore, like power.

Although there is a sense in which the camera does indeed capture reality, not just interpret it, photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are.

The is anggression implicit in every use of the camera.

As photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal, they also help people to take possession of a space in which they are insecure.

Taking photographs has set up a chronic voyeuristic relation to the world which levels the meaning of all events.

Photography is essentially an act of non-intervention.

Even is incompatible with intervention in a physical sense, using a camera is still a form of participation.

In fact, using a camera is not a very good way of getting at someone sexually. Between photographer and subject, there has to be distance.

Still, there is something predatory in the act of taking a picture. To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have; it turns people into objects tha can be symbolically possessed.

Aesthetic distance seems built into the very experience looking at photographs, if not right away, then certainly with the passage of time.

The camera makes reality atomic, manageable, and opaque.

In contrast to the amorous relation, which is based on how something looks, understanding is based on how something functions.

via Femina geekoides

Japan 2003, dir. Takashi Shimizu

Roger Ebert seems to hate the US remake by the same writer/ director, but I was just completely bored by the original.

Obviously, those who die while holding a grudge or who are violently torn from their lives, come back to haunt to living. Sometimes, it seems, they come back as zombies to eat the living. Fair enough.

The horror of this, however, completely eludes the viewer of Ju-on. OK, so the characters are afraid. And the family desaster that started the whole thing must have been awful. But none of this comes together. We're all afraid of dying. So, I guess, are the characters. But beyond that, the haunted house that goes to swallow them all does not instill or trigger any kind of primal fear.

Shimizu seems to have spent a big chunk of his crative live on various versions and sequels of Ju-on, but for this, the film's pretty carelessly done. The scenes are traditional horror - someone rounds a corner or looks into a cupboard, the music swells, a quick cut, and we get to see something frightful that, on second sight, turns out to look less horrible and it will behave later on.

The other day, a guy called Michael Grin mailed me to offer a business partnership. Here's something new - the guy's not a Nigerian heiress, but writes in German to tell me that a Russian company wants me as their representative in Germany.

The reply-to email given in the mail-text is cert_plus@inbox.ru (complete with two ICQ number, in case you want to have some fun: 264453218 and 325505956). The "From" field says the mail is from AnthonyCharlotte@death-star.com and the reply-to is JozyWinifred@1webave.com.

The footer of the mail, finally, warns me not to reply because this mail is robot-generated.

Duh.

Following a link from Eric Zimmerman's gameLab newsletter, I happened, for the second time in three days, upon an advert for The L-Word on a semi-geek-oriented website. It's hard to conceive of digital games and web-cartoons as the same kind of barely off-center mainstram as the first and only and most cutting-edge lesbian TV series in the history of US televised entertainment. But there you go ...

Tracy Chevalier, 1999.

I did not like the movie. Nice tableaus that may or may not be true to the artist's style. And a hotch-potch plot about how a girl gets sold and traded in the world of men. No psychological development (ok for a still-life), no motivation, but a lot of Scarlett Johansson.

The book's so different. We get J. Vermeer's way of seeing and painting (though less of it than I would have hoped) through the eyes and mind of young Griet. Griet who sees more than others and by and by acquires the words to talk about it, too. But she acquires those words and concepts mostly through her own perception, not so much courtesy of someone actively teaching her.

Griet moves in a world were women are sold and traded by men, and, occasioanlly, by women. But she's learning the tricks of this trade. Not that she manages to step out of the system, after all, it's mid 17th century. But she picks her way and manages to come out some sort of top.

So much for motives picked up by the movie.

But the book negotiates a whole different set of agendas, that give it a dimension that film is simply, disappointingly, lacking. Very much does not happen in Girl. Many things just fail to happen. Instead, it follows a more holographic concept of narrative (a bit like what hyperfiction, at times, tried): There is no need to tell a story. The story, the work, comes together out of smaller parts, like the white of a linnen cap or a cloud comes together out of blue and violet and yellow. "It may not have told a story, but it was still a painting you could not stop looking at." (p. 97 in my Harper Collins paperback)

It's about how the things we know determine the things we see. "After that I could not stop looking." (p. 108)

It's about how knwoing who we are and how we are situated prevents us from seeing. "Van Ruijven tried too hard when he looked at paintings, with his honeyed words and studied expressions. He was too aware of having an audience to perform for, whereas the baker merely said what he thought." (p. 133) "It's not the painting that is Catholic or Protestant (...) but the people who look at it, and what they expect to see." (p. 148)

And, finally, it's about being who one is and knowing who that is. "'Take care to remain yourself,' he had warned me so long ago. I wondered if I had done so. It was not always easy to know." (p. 247)

Girl With a Pearl Earring, the book, is also a pretty good read.

In its last issue of 2004, Die Zeit dedicated its Dossier-section to digital art: music, film, net.art ... The outlook is rather pessimsitic: The tools are there, but teh "art" produced fails to touch. They have nothing to say, but they say it perfectly well.

I hate to read this. While hyperfiction and its digital siblings are almost certainly not the "embarrassingly simple embodiment of postmodern theory" there were very briefly made out to be, they are children of their time: self-reflective, plotless, formal. And just because this has been done in other media before doesn't mean digital media might not do it well.

But, much as I hate to say this, there's some truth here. Where's the hyperfiction that's really keeling me over? There's Donna Leishman's phd-project, Deviant: The Possession of Christian Shaw. There is Of Day, of Night, forthcoming from Eastgate Systems. But i haven't been thrilled or provoced into thought lately. And that's especially true for computer games. I saw the companion DVD of games-mag Gamestar today. There was eye-candy, demolition models, great textures, better missions, better firing power -but none of this talks to me about life (or art, for that matter).