some moving thoughts

This is a blog about three recent movies that I watched: A Man with a Movie Camera (1929) by Dziga Vertov, The Lake House (2006) played by Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves, and Evan Almighty (2007) played by Steve Carell, Morgan Freeman, and Lauren Graham. The similarity from all of them is that they are better than what I expected and that’s it.

AMWAMC is a black and white experimental movie shot in the nascent days of filming on celluloid. It has no specific storyline and just a pure indulgence in recording. That’s probably the biggest joy of a filmmaker. That is if he can just make a movie by focusing fully on the visual composition and free from the tyranny of a narrative.

The content of the film is also interesting. It has several things that I wanted to comment on. It experimented with shooting techniques that are quite innovative and creative even by today’s standard. Among my favorites are the bird-eye view of the city and a couple of breathtaking freeze frame moments.

The subjects in the movie include people from a wide range of social classes in Ukraine mainly the rich, the poor, and the workers. Another main subject is the daily mix of urban activities of factories, heavy machines, trains, trams, pedestrians, horses, carriages, and rickshaw. It is the time when the images of heavy industrial era technology can still coexist with a residue of medieval technology in the streets of big cities. The main experimental value of that work is its attempt to combine film and photography into one cohesive or hybrid project.

The Lake House is a nice little charming romantic movie but with some intellectual interests to me. Well the first obvious thing is this is the reunion of Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves after Speed more than a decade ago. Besides, they are both such a good looking Caucasian male and female that any kind of movie which even only has one of them will make it worth your eight-and-a-half dollar in the theatre.

Alex (Reeves) is portraying an architect who is in a juncture in his life both professionally and privately. At work, he has just moved out from his dad’s prestigious practice in downtown Chicago to a ‘less’ glamorous job at developer’s building site. In his private life, he is in the familiar quest to search for the ideal companion. He lives in 2004. Kate (Bullock) who lives in 2006 is a young doctor who has just got into the, already cold, life together with a successful young lawyer. All of these characters are caricatures of modern metropolitan people.

But what’s exciting is when they both start communicating to each other and exchanging affection back and forth literally through times. Alex is constructing his dream every day until he will meet this woman. Kate flashback-ing through her memories to find this guy she met at some point in the past. Both are basic story-telling techniques but rarely are both deployed simultaneously and so seamlessly on a single screen. When you feel the switch in the story-telling perspective it is a sublime movie feeling. This is also probably the first movie, at least for me, that illustrate the possibility of the multiple universes advocated by string theorists like Brian Greene.

The Lake House itself is a beautiful project. It is an early 20th century art-nouveou style glass house set on a scenic lake. It is not a real building but a set constructed in 7 weeks and had to be torn down immediately after the movie production. Just to add a couple observations. First, with the single-pane glass on a lakeside in the Midwest, it would be almost impossible to live in that house in the winter. Second, if Alex’s father died in 2005 and the house was constructed in the beginning his career and when Alex was between 5 and 8 years old, then the year it was built must fall between 1950s and 1960s. At that time, new modernism and avant-garde architecture were at their heights. To build an art-nouveau house like that for a young architect rising in his career, he must be a retro or traditional style architect.

Last, last, and finally is Evan Almighty. I praise this movie for it’s creative political attempt. Like other movies in the same genre, this one quite successfully caters to audience from various ages and social backgrounds. But what’s different is that it also able to send a subtle political message that are acceptable to both the right wing conservative and left wing environmentalist.

the convergence

Beethoven is the household name in our popular culture associated with creative and artistic genius in music. I have always tried to learn more about him but never got a good chunk of time to spend on it. And fortunately tonight I stumbled upon the movie Copying Beethoven (2006) and got a quick intro into his life. He is portrayed as the typical blend of a master genius that is eccentric, egoistic, imbalance, lonely, spiritual, but on top of those all is brilliant.

In that movie, I enjoy the images of 18th century Europe and the Baroque Vienna. I am also inspired by Beethoven’s intense devotion in writing music. Something that I can really related with right now as I am drawn more and more into the passion to ‘write’ architecture. A composer’s life is similar to an architect. His main preoccupation is to imagine and plan the orchestra. He is able to conceptualize the simultaneous flows of many instruments and at the same time also able deploy a specific effect of an instrument. Architecture is like an orchestra. It is the convergence of techniques, history, and effects. That’s what makes it very exciting to me.

Thinking about architecture occupies all my waking hours. Everything that I see and experience can be projected back into this passion inside me. I feel like it is something that I will do for the rest of life no matter what my profession is and will be.