One cannot avoid the temptation of reading the book, after watching the movie; twice.
The movie is excellent in the way it describes schizophrenia (a form of); better than many textbooks. One can actually see the mind at work of a math genius called Nash and even empathize with his afflictions; his inner struggle.
From nearly the onset of the pathology, to its development, treatment and some recovery (by Nash's free will...and his wife's love), the movie tells a story through time: Nash while a student in college through his several jobs (even those imaginary!) till his final recognition as a Nobel-prize winner for his work in the mathematics and economics fields. Especially poignant are college and family scenes, for the awkwardness inherent to the pathology at stake: schizophrenia, its painful delusions and paranoia. Ron Howard did a great job/movie; Russell Crowe, a terrific acting part.
The music of the film, by James Horner, has been a fantastic feat; how numbers and equations and solutions... and equilibrium ....became delicate, touching musical notes, one wonders.
Well, if you're a mathematician, maybe you'll get curious about psychotherapy; if you're already a psychotherapist, math will tempt you in its beauty, as well.
I owe the second view of the movie to my friend* at GR who had made a review of the book.
Now, I can't let it go, listening to the movie soundtrack.
“Mathematicians are comparatively sane as a group. It is the people who study logic that are not so sane.” J. Nash
"Nash was totally spooky. He wouldn’t look at you. He’d take a lot of time answering a question. If he thought the question was foolish he wouldn’t answer at all. He had no affect. It was mixture of pride and something else. He was so isolated but there really was underneath it all a warmth and appreciation of people” A fellow student at Princeton
"The Wall is a wonderful novel. It is not often that you can say only a woman could have written this book, but women in particular will understand th "The Wall is a wonderful novel. It is not often that you can say only a woman could have written this book, but women in particular will understand the heroine's loving devotion to the details of making and keeping life, every day felt as a victory against everything that would like to undermine and destroy. It is as absorbing as Robinson Crusoe." Doris Lessing
“External freedom has probably never existed, but neither have I ever known anyone who knew inner freedom.” Marlen Haushoffer
I have watched the movie, with the same title, by Julian Pölsler.
A long, deeply felt-meditation on loneliness, survival, friendship with animals, …since she’s all alone, inside a mysterious, invisible wall, deemed to be three meters thick, which separates her from the rest of the world.
Up there, among the mountains and forests, a woman has got a cottage to live in, a cow to take care of; and dear dog and a cat, to start with.
For two years, starting on a 5th of November and ending on a 25th of February, she’ll try to accurately record, on the available paper, her inward musings on fear, hope, on being a human and not getting into despair; rather, at all costs, survive the ravages of the weather, loneliness and loss.
Her writings, though, include blessed summer moments in the wild, using her binoculars for gazing at the stars. Fear, though, erupts often.
Out of the harshness a new self has emerged.
She’ll have to use a gun, kill a man, hunt deer, do her crops, plant her potatoes and witness her beloved animals dying one after the other: cat, dog…; in the end, however, she’ll have the white crow. One, a single one, she would like to unite with another white one….
Just watched the movie. It's about two parallel (real) stories; one on Rabbi Albert L. Lewis; the other on Henry Covington. The
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Just watched the movie. It's about two parallel (real) stories; one on Rabbi Albert L. Lewis; the other on Henry Covington. The sportswriter is the intersecting point. He's been asked an eulogy by the Rabbi; yet, he'll get to know also a former drug-dealer and drug-addict, Henry Covington, now a minister in a Presbyterian, Detroit church, crumbling apart. While collecting data from the Rabbi's life, the sportswriter will witness change in himself.
The church gets rebuilt. Life takes on a new meaning.
Poignant,... for both those two lives under examination.
-- UPDATE
Mitch Albom has written, very recently, an interesting article: "Lady Liberty has her say about The Wall"
I’ve watched the movie (of 1958) with the same title, by Alfred Hitchcock.
This is a psychological thriller of the best quality, I have ever seen. As tI’ve watched the movie (of 1958) with the same title, by Alfred Hitchcock.
This is a psychological thriller of the best quality, I have ever seen. As the film-director W. Friedkin put it, it’s a case of “a lost love and mistaken identity”.
Especially in the first part [my division] of the movie the viewer is focused on the pathology of Madeleine (played by Kim Novak); whereas in the second part Scotty (played by Jimmy Stewart) becomes somehow pathological (melancholic) due to the presumed death of Madeleine, the person he was in love with. The last (third) part of the movie provides the viewer with the sort of scam revelation Scotty has been under since the very beginning. But since he’s not careful enough he loses his second chance: he loses Judy too, in fact Madeleine under disguise.
The introductory scenes show how Scotty became acrophobic and, henceforth, a retired detective.
Maybe due to Hitchcock’s maturity coupled with the 1950’s inherent beauty*, the movie results in a fine work of art; from the moment it starts till the end.
Shot in San Francisco, it allows the viewer the chance to enjoy bumpy roads, the Golden Gate and the Bay area landscapes a few times; even a visit to the sequoias forest. But most beautiful* are the camera sequences shot in the Art Gallery when Madeleine contemplates a painting, under the secret eyeing of Scotty, then with a mission: to unravel the pathology of the wife of his friend. “Just follow my wife”; Scotty, the retired detective, accepts the assignment.
Scotty had seen her “falling” into the Bay; so he rushed to save her from the waters. She doesn’t know what happened. Her husband had told Scotty that someone had taken possession of Madeleine: Carlota Valdes.
Scotty will get fooled in a visit to a church, “witnessing” Madeleine falling from its roof. Thence his melancholy state.
Until he meets another woman called Judy, remotely resembled to blondish Madeleine. Throughout their acquaintance period, Scotty tries, by all means, to change Judy’s looks: her clothing and hair color, namely. Scotty turns obsessive about the looks.
The last scenes of the movie, showing a determined Scotty forcing Judy to climb the inner stairs of a church, in this kind of going back to the scene of the crime, turns therapeutic for himself, who overcomes temporarily his fear of heights; yet fatal to Judy/Madeleine who gets scared, by the appearance of an innocent wondering nun; and, in fact, falls from the church heights.
About the movie Hitch commented it was a chance for Jimmy Stewart to “indulgence in a form of necrophilia”.
After a sort of accident (ice breaking over the river), 15 year old David finds out he’s got a power he doesn’t master that well; he can te
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After a sort of accident (ice breaking over the river), 15 year old David finds out he’s got a power he doesn’t master that well; he can teleport himself. He leaves home, where he hadn’t much love.
Now on his own, and after robbing a bank, he’s marveled at his new apartment and rich lifestyle in New York. He can easily get a girlfriend in London and thereafter jump to a quick meal over the Sphinx in Egypt and enjoy some surfing moments on the ocean.
He’s truly a JUMPER; he can go anywhere, by free will.
Yet there’s someone after him: Roland, who knows how to block David’s powers. ...
Just started watching the movie; interesting. ...more
A crew working on the soil of Mars faces a storm. They evacuate for the ship, but they have left behind one member (M
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A crew working on the soil of Mars faces a storm. They evacuate for the ship, but they have left behind one member (Mark) deemed to be dead. Yet he was alive.
What could he do? To die or to try to survive on his own expertise: Botany. He will determine to survive, to grow food (potatoes*, mainly) and to contact earth. He’ll be picked up later on by the same crew members, who had embarked on a new mission, meanwhile.
I have watched the movie by Ridley Scott and I’ve found it not that great; perhaps, I was expecting too much from him.
Maybe what’s most positive in the movie is the sense of determination and the depiction of several instances where the survivor proves his mettle: making the best of the resources available (food, oxygen, water….), even using those remnants of previous missions (Pathfinder) to try to contact earth.
A succession of Martian days: sols…, until the rendezvous with the previous crew and the arrival to earth. It results somehow funny the use of Disco as recreation as sols pass by, but that’s the only kind of recorded music that’s been left for Mark. The communications with earth and the intervention of the Chinese mission, are interesting too.
Mr Cramer, the main character played by W. Shatner, arrives to Caxton with a sort of “mission”: to promote racial hate, it seems. He’s got all the seducing techniques you can imagine. He’s an agitator; a master instigator. He intrudes upon the psyche of the people and the life of this small place; soon, black people are in a dire situation; ads start saying: “nigger out!"....more
The facts are these: on the 2nd of October, 2006, in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania USA, a man got inside a school (belonging to an Amish community), sho The facts are these: on the 2nd of October, 2006, in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania USA, a man got inside a school (belonging to an Amish community), shot 10 school girls and then killed himself. Five children got killed.
Obviously, it was a tragedy for both the children’s parents and to the wife of the shooter, namely. The story has an high point, because it revolves around the notion of forgiveness (a very distinct trait of the Amish community). Still, on the facts domain, I would refer the mother of the shooter who, some years on, said there are “no words to describe what it felt like…70 Amish people encircling us” (at funeral’s day). The wife of the shooter spoke of “redemption”. Defying logic and human common sense, the Amish community followed the way of forgiveness.
The fictionalized story talks about a man ruminating upon a baby child he’d lost; he’s preparing the assault on the school, telling no one about that. When it happens (the tragedy) some of the parents of the children involved follow the way of forgiveness.
But there’s one mother --Ida--who dares to “hate the man who took our daughter’s [Mary Beth] life”; she thinks about leaving the community; grief-therapy sessions won’t work. Her sister had been shunned in the past from the community.
During those sessions, it’s easy to spot strong, opposing currents of feelings; on one side some mothers who point the way of forgiving, but Ida being very reluctant, facing the troubled wife of the shooter, unmercifully. Also, a reporter who wonders repeatedly throughout the movie: how genuine the forgiveness had been.
The movie will surely make you wonder about those common terms (and dilemmas) such as “forgetting and forgiving”, “justice by man versus divine justice”; pardon or…. forgiving.
Meanwhile, one of the children (Rebecca) who had been in a coma, in hospital, recovers and tells about the brave attitude of Mary Beth before being killed. MB asked to be shot first and nevertheless would pray for the shooter. Upon knowing these details Ida changes her attitude and affirms: “before she died …MB had forgiveness in her heart, I cannot do no less”.
The story results great because it challenges one to see the difference between an world-view [check on the reporter] and the Amish community very uncommon way of life; one of humility, kindness …the community above the individual.
After a time of decay comes the turning point. The powerful light that has been banished returns. There is movement, but it is not brought
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After a time of decay comes the turning point. The powerful light that has been banished returns. There is movement, but it is not brought about by force... The movement is natural, arising spontaneously. For this reason the transformation of the old becomes easy. The old is discarded and the new is introduced. Both measures accord with the time; therefore no harm results.
I Ching
The book has been adapted to cinema, under the title “Mindwalk”, by Amadeus Capra. I have not read the book, but I have watched the movie.
Before entering into the movie, some notes on the author of The Tao of Physics.
In an interview he gave, Fritjof Capra (director of the Center of Ecoliteracy) clarified his thought: (1) he rejects in an absolute way the “vitalist” model (which admits such notions as “the spark of life” and “vital field”); (2) his model is a synthesis of the quantitative approach (what matter is made of) and the qualitative approach (what is the organization of matter); his emphasis is on PROCESS; so (he joked): he’s only 33% materialistic. (3) Mind and consciousness emerged from matter at a certain level of complexity (of the evolution). His approach is typically holistic (versus the Cartesian view).
Now, the movie. It’s an adaptation of the book “The Turning Point” and it’s very simple as regards to settings and number of characters. The movie is about dialogue, mainly; is about divulging the message, a new view of life. I would say the Messenger has been chosen on purpose to be a woman, in this case, the actress Liv Ullmann.
Two very different American brothers, middle aged, are the introducers of the plot. They talk over the phone. Jack, a politician, in Washington. Tom, a poet, a theater lover ,now in France.
They get to a deal, so that Jack will meet Tom at Mont St Michel, by the beach. Jack is about to run again for senate; Tom disappointed with life, finds Jack ever “opinionated” …maybe a public persona only, a façade. They walk and they talk. Until they come across this lady, a physicist, on a sabbatical leave.
She’s Sonia, whose daughter finds her quite apart, always reading books, maybe too intellectual.
So the trio walks and talks now. And this is the core of the movie: the dialogue; one idealistic/poetic mind called Tom, the realistic mind called Jack, the politician, and Sonia the bearer of a new approach: anti-Cartesian, holistic. Think of processes instead of structures. Descartes had this dream of a world as a perfect machine; well, the world is a living organism.
Their talk is almost unending, sometimes even boring: they touch on population control, debt, arms race, pollution, new technologies; Physics and Biology,…Medicine for the rich; the nature of matter and light.
Sonia always pressing for a new approach to these problems: the feminine way, since, so far, these problems have been approached by a “patriarchal idea of man dominating all”. What’s needed for solving world problems: the idea of interconnectedness; people just don’t see it, suggests Sonia: it’s a “crisis of perception”,” we need a new vision”; change everything at the same time…
Her own life experience is shared: she had been in the USA, in Boston, doing research on lasers (medical applications), but things changed: she had found that now the US Defense department was using the technology on Star Wars.
On matter, for example, she explains to the brothers: what really exists: not particles but RELATIONSHIPS; relationships make up matter. At a subatomic level there are no solid objects.
Sometimes over the dialogue, Tom, the poet, gets a little bit away from Jack and Sonia; but the poet is perceptive and even asks her: what’s the place of your daughter in your theories?. They walk over the beach….the tide is low. The politician seems a little bit convinced of this new view and invites Sonia to join him in his campaign team.
"...I loved my books, he furnished me from mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom"
Prospero, in The Tempest, by W. Shakespeare
This
"...I loved my books, he furnished me from mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom"
Prospero, in The Tempest, by W. Shakespeare
This should be the GR sort of brand: the value of books. Recently, I’ve watched the movie (The Old Man Who Read Love Stories by Rolf de Heer) with the same title of the book.
-What? 60 years old? Maybe,…he guesses he’s older than that. Antonio Bolivar is the slightly-illiterate-guy now living in the Amazon. He came with wife, but she died a while…a long while ago.
He finds himself living in a hut with a craving for books. Tentatively reading and spelling and thinking hardly about MEANING.
We witness his dabbling over the “Lovers of the forgotten garden”…,some lines read,… a lot pondered. Words have weight…and a flavor per se,…. AB savors.
AB contemplates a radiant future: “I am able to read till I am 100 years old”.
To read books he’s got to ask for them; from the Alcaide’s office, or from a friend, the dentist.
AB owns nothing, but…a great communion with nature.
The village he’s living in (El Idilio) has been plagued with strange deaths; people start wondering about the role of a jaguar.
The Alcaide of the place establishes a deal with Bolivar: you kill the jaguar and you get your hut with a certificate of property (ownership). It seems fair enough. AB accepts the challenge; he “knows” the mind of the jaguar: “you think you know more…I have patience enough, my beauty”.
Out there in the deep jungle, now alone…, AB tries to read inside a hut: he cannot; he’s not yet killed the jaguar. He’s got difficulty finding the meaning for the text: “I cannot read!”; -is he afraid? does emotion block thinking?
So he departs straight into the jungle; he’s determined to “capture the courage” of the animal, using the Indians way: the bamboo tube with the poisoned arrow. He throws away his gun.
I’ve watched a 1958 British movie-adaptation of the novel. It approaches scientific issues in a very prescient way; especially the influence of (very powerful) magnetic forcefields in life forms.
In our days the topic of mutations and exposure to cosmic rays is quite studied, under the general theme of global warming. Yet, by the end of the fifties certain ideas were already brooding in the right direction. This film/novel has got a particular aspect: the intervention of (good) aliens who have a warning/preventive intervention near humanity.
The story goes this way. In a Lab, an experiment has been conducted using magnetic fields to study their effects on metals. Yet, due to some unexplained phenomena (clocks that stop in the vicinity, radio and TV interferences, freak weather) some start wondering about a “spread-out” effect going well beyond the Lab at stake.
The head of the Lab is a quite mysterious man. He had to replace his assistant, and now he’s a got a new one: a French, brilliant lady called Michelle. She’s the one who’ll assist Gil, who works there too, uncovering the whole issue.
Meanwhile there’s a strange character (Smith, he calls himself, the man with funny whiskers) that shows up first in the woods meeting a girl, collecting insects. Smith is the alien figure who plays in his dialogue with the girl: you wouldn’t believe I came from a planet in the back of a “giant dragon fly”.
The police are investigating the case. It’s worrisome a tramp man with injured face; is it due to radioactive materials?. The papers show intriguing headlines: “Has Britain been invaded? …More flying saucers” [sighted].
Gil and Michelle develop a more-than-cooperative relation…and they meet Jack Smith. The alien discloses: it may get catastrophic if earth’s magnetic field is tampered with. It could mean the exposure to radioactive rays, should the Ionosphere be damaged. People could go mad. But what about those “quick breeders”, like the insects?
Smith has told them that in his planet they use “magnetic lines as a means of propulsion”…and “you brought down one of our spaceships".
Very true, mutations are already in full swing. In the woods some insects got gigantic. Michelle got caught in a giant web.
Darwin would have loved it, I mean, the movie, and those gigantic insects. Certainly interesting, an idea of evolution by forces he did not dream about...,did he?
This an important story (The Crystal Egg). So important that the writer Jorge Luis Borges wrote in Buenos Aires, on the 3rd of March 1949, in his EpilThis an important story (The Crystal Egg). So important that the writer Jorge Luis Borges wrote in Buenos Aires, on the 3rd of March 1949, in his Epilogue to "Ficciones":"In The Zahir and The Aleph I believe I can pinpoint some influence of the short story The Crystal Egg (1899) by Wells".
I have watched the story The Crystal Egg in the old series “Tales of tomorrow”. It’s a story bordering on personal belief and science. A very good one.
"And in a perfect darkness, such as could be produced by velvet wrapping, the crystal did undoubtedly appear very faintly phosphorescent." (from the book)
"Suffice that the effect was this: the crystal, being peered into at an angle of about 137 degrees from the direction of the illuminating ray, gave a clear and consistent picture of a wide and peculiar country-side." (from the book)
The introductory lines are full of resonance. They would make anyone wonder about. You may hear:“what would you do if you thought someone from another world is watching you?”.
It all started in an antiques shop. A man (quite obfuscated in his appearance) seems to be interested in one item: a crystal egg which looks dusty and is the focus of a brief negotiating dialogue. The antiques’ dealer wants 5 pounds for it, but the man just has 2.10. It seems they reach a sort of arrangement: the man will show up again to cover for the missing money.
Why the interest in that piece? Only a hint is given by the interested man: “I was told…”.
Meanwhile, the antiques’ dealer decides to contact a distinguished Physics professor for an analysis of the egg: Professor Frederick Vaneck, a man of sciences, for 10 years running one department at Cambridge University. Though very busy, he accepts the task of analysis, but tells the Antiques man to show up only the next day.
Vaneck spends all night in his “lab”: all lights off, just the egg under analysis on his table, now a crystal egg with “light of its own”. Yes, inside of it Vaneck discovers a “landscape”: “Mars’”. He concludes due to the position of ascending Neptune. Plus: he’s seen a (one-eyed) creature staring at himself.
In the morning the antiques dealer, despite being asked for some additional days of analysis, (even told “don’t sell it!” and “”it has a world inside of it”) runs away with the coveted crystal egg.
Vaneck is desperate. He’s got to find the egg. He searches on the Antiques shop but finds about something terrible: the dealer got dead; “died in an alley”.
Then Vaneck wants an article on the issue published by his editor, an "old friend". However, the editor gets reluctant: he wants proof for the story: “where is the crystal egg?!”.
Vaneck looks maddened: “all who see it first are mad!!” . It would be like Galileo’s” (at his telescope seeing for the first time Jupiter’s). Vaneck reiterates he’s seen the creature “watching us”: “through their crystal egg they are seeing us night and day!”. No way, the editor remains skeptical.
At home, Vaneck is recording his story on tape. The disk-tape is moving, but someone enters the room and Vaneck gets shot. No hint about who did it.
He (Vaneck) was right, those who “watch us” get sure: no proofs left behind. No loose ends....more
I’ve watched the movie (1936) with the same title. It seems, the opening scene is about a conversation between two angels, way up in the atmosphere, about men.
They are considering men “silly little creatures”. But there’s one third angel who is an exception: he favors men: “I like them …their life” being “so short”. He wants to give power to men. But the other two oppose:”don’t”…”just try one”.
So the third angel picks the lucky [?] one: Mr Fotheringay. He gets the “touch”, when about to get into a bar.
At the bar, there’s a discussion going on…which touches on “miracles”. Most of them don’t believe it. Until Mr. F tries his move on the lamp (using his “willpower”)…and manages to get it suspended in the air, levitating, upside down.
Then at home he tries again the use of his wishing/will powers: he thinks of rabbits…and they appear; he thinks of huge grapes and they materialize. He discovers he can also make things disappear. ..and turn small things into bigger things. He manages to put on a levitation state: both bed and table. Amazing. He could make money with that, he wonders. He contacts the girl (Maggie) at the clothings shop: “something happened to me”.
-How will he use those powers?
Let’s see, what has accomplished, so far, this simple-minded mister F? Of his own volition nothing that important; he’s been led by others.
A banker tells him that people must be kept in a state of “want”…of “need”. To mister F it would be simple: “why can’t we just make it (money)?; he had just made it: a bill out-of-the blue in his own hands. The banker got furious: that’s forgery, illegal!
His boss, too, proposes him a deal:”a monopoly of miracles”; it would mean “big money”; but not with that healing part.
The thing is that F has almost no limits to what he can do: he’s just sent a British police to the other side of the Atlantic: landing in the streets of San Francisco. It makes some Americans wonder about the 4th dimension.
Yet, there are two limits. He likes Maggie, but in truth the one he really wants is Ada Price, a co-worker; he makes some tricks for her: a tiara and other jewelry stuff; but he cannot win her love, she tells him, even when he gets her Cleopatra-like dressed. Plus, F cannot get into people’s minds: “inside”.
Discussions about what to do with his abilities continue; an adviser tells him: why not banish disease?
The rich Chairman of the bench of the place has a conversation with F, he wants an explanation for the “outbreak of miracles” police is complaining about. He’s skeptical about F’s powers. F changes a garden of roses into a Bombay landscape. Now he believes.
Soon he’ll be concocting a plan to kill F: a lunatic, a dangerous one (especially to the rich),who wants to start a Golden Age, an era of Peace and Plenty.
F is fed up of advice and others' views. So he finally does it in his own way: a world “according to his dreams” …he wants also some fun. HIS own way, otherwise he threatens…everyone.
“I was born small, and grew small”. He’s a common “vulgar fellow”; what’s his share, so far?; now on he’s like a king, in his own huge palace.
He’s just started summoning the world´s leaders, the bankers, the military, judges, …into his own palace: “if you don’t do what I tell you: I’ll wipe you out!!”.He orders them, all of them: “run it better!”,[the world].
The magic gets to an end when F thinks he can “stop the sun”…even Earth from rotating. Maggie had told him: don’t be selfish. But he does the final blow: Earth stops rotating…and that’s the crumbling and crashing of the Golden Age.
The three angels watch. The third angel’s experiment has failed. Not totally ,because one “final wish” still materializes: F asks for the world to get back to the moment when he was for the first time touched by the “will power”. And so, mister F's final request is exactly this one: (turning his eyes to heaven): no more miracles (please implied).
The critical angels comment: F has been egotistical, vindictive and lustful. Yet the third angel has got some hope on men: they were “once apes”, “give them time”. The 3rd angel will grant power only “bit by bit”, now on.
This is one of the best of Wells, using comedy to speak about social class, mankind’s deepest wishes and misery, and God.
I know somewhere he may be cheering up, laughing out loud….in silence, there, seated in the audience's place,... while we (the readers) are caught in this stage which is “reading his books” and inevitably wondering too: “what would I do if I had the power, the “willpower”?.
Wells knows our thoughts,…because we read him. ...more
A novel made movie (both by Eriko Kitagawa). It's mostly a romantic tour through the streets of Paris, La Seine, Arc de Triomphe, the Eiff
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A novel made movie (both by Eriko Kitagawa). It's mostly a romantic tour through the streets of Paris, La Seine, Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower...by a young Japanese couple.
Plenty of light and photographs. The girl plays the piano, takes photos of french delicacies...and has a sad story, of a lost child, to tell.
The boy came with another girl, his sister, but she went away. So he's introduced to Paris by the shoes´ girl. A simple, tender story, with good music by Ryuishi Sakamoto.
Ah! the shoes. When the young couple met for the first time, the girl just broke one of the high heels. By the end of the movie,the young man, who, meanwhile, left her, has sent a new pair of shoes,presumably from Japan.Thus the title of the movie:"I have to buy new shoes".
Somewhere, in a remote region of the Sahara desert, there, still hides a Queen and her servants, taking refuge inside caves. She’s a well-educated bea Somewhere, in a remote region of the Sahara desert, there, still hides a Queen and her servants, taking refuge inside caves. She’s a well-educated beautiful woman, a polyglot …yet, for men seeking after her charms, she’s fatal. She is queen Antinea, the sovereign of the “Hoggar”. You’re in the Blad-el-Khouf: the country of the fear.
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She is the last descendant of Atlantis´ kings lineage; the offspring of Neptune and Clito. It’s written in the book of Benoit that, though sinking, Atlantis center isle didn’t submerge; it’s now surrounded by insurmountable mountains: only this oasis was left after the Sahara Sea dried out…9,000 years ago.
The book is about the story of two military men who have been there. Morhange and Saint-Avit. The latter manages to escape the hide-out; but is found moribund in the desert, by a caravan. While in hospital, in a delirious state, he utters incomprehensible phrases like “it’s the number 54!!!”. Officers say that there’s no hope of finding Morhange. What really happened to him?
Saint-Avit returned to Paris. It’s 1914. He tries to forget about the experience. While in a café, midst the jazz tunes, he recalls the veiled-Queen.
On the 1st of May he’s back in the extreme south of the Sahara desert; he’s been appointed as commander of the post. This time he wants to go it alone…through the “great solitudes…and magic horizons”.
At the post he tells the story he’s been part of with Morhange. How they found out the palace… the strange tifinar (Tuareg) inscriptions;
how they got imprisoned, separately, inside the palace; how Morhange got received by the queen; and the jealousy of Saint Avit. How they were introduced in the red marble room: where golden statues of the men of the Queen stand. An archivist has told them: “they died of love”. Only one escaped, but even that one returned. Suicide, or craziness or opium can explain their deaths. Who shall become the 54th? or the 55th?
This review is partly based on the silent movie by Jacques Feyder (L’Atlantide) of 1921. As for the book, I would like to make a short commentary about the polemics (court-case) which involved Benoit: did he plagiarize H. R. Haggard (especially from the novel Ayesha)?
It’s been said that Benoit didn’t read English nor did he have any Ayesha’s novel published in France by his time. However, in the book there are plenty of English references, like:
«Je ne me souviendrai jamais sans émotion de mes dix-neuvième et vingtième années, époque où je liquidai complètement ce petit héritage. Londres était véritablement alors une ville adorable. Je m'étais arrangé une très aimable garçonnière dans Piccadilly. Piccadilly! Shops, palaces, bustle and breeze, The whirling of wheels, and the murmur of trees."
or
"Sur le mur, près de la fenêtre, avec son canif, il écrivait dans la pierre quelque chose. Regarde, ça se voit encore. Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight..."
Thus, he had to understand some English. And he lost the case.
Interestingly, in the library of Queen Antinea, Morhange and Saint Avit found many books; they browsed through them: one was Don Qijote…the other was Macbeth. Plus: Plato's Critias.
At least they (Haggard and Benoit) shared something: this taste for the adventurous and the exotic, and they were good at making it live,….through words. Erudite, as some of his characters, Benoit made it well. ...more
Matthew is a very rich lawyer. He’s rotten rich mainly because of heritages he got which date back to his grand grandmother princess Kekipi: she married a banker who was her assets manager. Now, Matt has plenty of properties to sell. And yet, he prefers using the money of his own job: ”I don’t like heritages”.
She was seven years younger than Matt. They met 20 years ago. They got married, they had two daughters ….but now she’s in a hospital, in a coma. She had a racing-boat accident. Joanie was alcoholic; she liked motorbikes…and racing-boats.
Scottie is a 10-year-old “crazy” girl. Her older sister (Alex), once posing as model for bikinis and alike stuff, had drugs problems; and alcohol issues too.
The book describes with great detail those few days (and memories) in and out of the hospital visits. Now, it’s all about being (and learning TO BE) a competent father with Scottie and Alex. Being able to learn from nanny Esther about the minutiae of foods and mobile phone messaging slang... and all kinds of habits of irreverent Scottie.
For some time Matt feels awkward, an “ass-hole father”. While in hospital he looks at his wife and thinks:”I need you”. How to say farewell to a person he loves so much? how to explain it to 10-year -old Scottie? Alex had been away in a special school due to her drugs problem. Matt brings her back home; she brings her boyfriend along.
They receive updates from doctor Johnston: mother signs are getting worse. It’s an irreversible coma. Matt gets to know her life will: no life-supporting systems: no life-preserving machines.
Alex had drug problems…and she’s the one who’ll tell father that Joanie was having a love affair. Things get really complicated for Matt. He cries for the first time. He’s got to reformulate his feeling world.
These are very tense (few) days for Matt and the girls.
The book is an inside-his-troubled-mind journey/window.
Trials, coping with death ….and life.
A fine job by writer Kaui Hart Hemmings. No wonder the book turned into a movie.
So much has been said and written about K. Hamsun (Nazi collaborator, racist, detester of the English, misogynist, conservative, Hitler’s admirer, dissenter; a really mad man?), however, for this specific review, I would focus on the positive side of the writer: his psychological insights.
“I fancy I can read in the souls of those about me…I could see far into others´ souls, though I’m not great or clever head”.
Lieutenant Glahn, in “Pan”.
"Hunger" is truly a great narrative about the soul/troubled-life of a writer in a dire situation: hunger. A “too-much honest” young man, unable to compromise while waiting for a post adequate to his writing talent.
By 1890 we find a poor writer [K.P.] wandering through the streets of Christiana. He’s on a hunger state, though he fakes all the time he’s OK. He’s got no job…despite his talent.
"I stood up and searched through a bundle in the corner by the bed for a bite for breakfast, but finding nothing, went back to the window". (from the book)
He stares at sausages hanging on the grocery store; takes some crumbs at “home”; chews some paper; watches his ruined shoes "talking" to each other; at the butcher's he gets a bone for "his dog", in fact, for himself to bite. It borders the comic just watching him…"malgré" the tragic situation he’s in.
KP is waiting for a post in an editorial house; but he’s got to wait for some days, until he gets his article read and approved. In the meantime, he’s got expelled from his rented room; he’s got to find a new one and there’s no money coming in.
"Well then, you must go to the guard-house and report yourself as homeless!" said he.
Homeless? I hadn't thought of that. Yes, by Jove, that was a capital idea; and I thanked the constable on the spot for the suggestion. Could I simply go in and say I was homeless?" (from the book)
So he plays jokes with the police and the people around him. He fantasizes on Ylayali. He tries to sell his coat’s buttons. His jacket having been already sold, to hand the money to a street vendor….none being left for himself.
In the park he chases after two ladies, mother and daughter, telling them “you dropped the book…you dropped the book!”; but no one was carrying a book. The daughter finds it funny and gets an interest on KP. While her mother is absent she meets with KP and tells him: despite him being shy (mad?) …”I like you all the same!”.
He’s got to find a new place for living and writing; but his psychological/physical state is close to despair: “It’s all finished!!
He faints….he sees “things”: like Y promenading with a man…; all due to hunger.
"Out in the fjord I dragged myself up once, wet with fever and exhaustion, and gazed landwards, and bade farewell for the present to the town--to Christiania, where the windows gleamed so brightly in all the homes". (from the book)
KP won’t stay in Christiana; he embarks on a ship whose destiny is not revealed.
This is a great description of "madness"; maybe a borderline case,…that frontier between normalcy and madness, hard to trace with precision. In that sense, Hamsun is psychologically sane: a master descriptor,… a soul reader....more
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