"The American": A Movie Review.

November 22, 2010 at 6:46 P.M. A previously corrected "error" was restored to the text, then corrected, again, by me. ("Genius and Lust.")

September 26, 2010 at 1:03 P.M. In the middle of an unsuccessful effort to scan my computer, the cable signal to my computer was cut off or blocked, illegally. The computer shut down. The scan could not be completed. The message conveyed by this tactic on the part of New Jersey government officials, who know that this is computer crime directed against me, is: 1) New Jersey does not care whether crimes are committed in trying to stop me from posting "inconvenient truths"; and 2) the feds can't stop them and may be looking the other way. 

Is it all about cash? Which federal official has been bribed in this matter? Menendez?

The only logical conclusion drawn by observers is that the F.B.I. is unable (or unwilling) to protect persons struggling against the Trenton mafia or willing to testify against such figures. 

Nobody will cooperate with the feds in the future if they continue to let this slide, publicly. Maybe the mafia has more friends in the F.B.I. than the NYPD. 

I will continue to write from public computers. Mr. Holder, the whole world is watching.

A recent film starring George Clooney entitled, "The American" was a surprise. I expected a good thriller and the usual accomplished acting from Mr. Clooney. These expectations were fulfilled. I also discovered a work of Catholic meditation hidden inside an action movie.

"The American" is a much better movie than many New York reviewers realized. I say this as an audience member who is still surprised by Mr. Clooney's philosophical talent and political concerns. Bravos to all of the players.

The excellent script was attributed to a name that I did not recognize and, promptly, forgot. I apologize to this excellent writer whoever he or she may be. Clooney using a pseudonym, perhaps? (Yes, I will look up the name of the script writer and include it in this review.)

Having checked since writing the above, I believe the writer is "Rowan Joffe." Never heard of him. Is it "him"? An old joke often told in Hollywood concerns the proverbial dumb starlet who has sex with the writer under the impression that writers have some significance in tinsel land. Writers, sadly, do not matter much in the age of images. Cinema is a director's medium. Unless -- like Woody Allen -- the writer also directs, he or she is and should be at the service of the director. ("Drawing Room Comedy: A Philosophical Essay in the Form of a Film Script.")

The director Anton Corbijn is identified only as "a Dutch-born photographer." This is like calling Pablo Picasso a Spanish-born artist who plays around with colors. I will concentrate on various levels of this film: 1) the psychological investigation of individuation and meaning in terms of a quest for the definition of masculinity; 2) a theological inquiry into eschatology and the problem of evil, where Augustine and Aquinas are specifically invoked in the narrative; 3) a display of symbolist imagery in terms of cinematic language ("Papillon," "Breathless," "Hustle" are all alluded to in the imagery to which we are treated), along with Operatic lore (Madame Butterfly is referenced in a reverse-gender tribute to Puccini), literary echoes (the film is based on a stark and brilliant novel by Martin Booth) are obvious amidst the beautiful Apenines where St. Francis of Assissi fulfilled his salvific mission. I am aware of the location in the alps. The Apenines are identified in a road sign visible on screen for a good reason.

Mr. Butterfly may be one more soul saved by St. Francis.

The novel was originally entitled "A Very Private Gentleman." The work has been reissued by Picador as "The American." Henry James is only one of the relevant novelists for viewers reflecting on this film. The novel opens with the metaphor of the cave (caves are metaphors for the "Self"), which is so important in the story of St. Francis. The Operatic score features (I am guessing) Renata Tebaldi singing "Un Bel Di." The explicit hommage to Sergio Leone's ("Italiano"!) spaghetti westerns clues us in to the "spaghetti Noir thriller" that we are enjoying. ("'Shoot 'Em Up': A Movie Review.")

Images of women in this movie are disturbing and provocative. The paradoxically named Violante Placido ("Violently Peaceful") is one of the most erotically powerful women that I have seen on-screen in a very long time. "Violently peaceful" is a classic description of coitus. This woman -- as the character of "Clara" -- exudes sexuality combined with innocence or the absence of guilt in an unusual mixture, managing to capture and represent the feminine archetype of Woman, as goddess of love.

Sofia Loren and Gina Lollabrigida with a little extra humor in the eyes constitute the screen persona of Ms. Placido.

Anthony Burgess speaks of the "yielding, vulnerable quality which men see as essentially feminine ..." Ms. Placido adds a sense of humor, charm and intelligence to abundant eros and that makes her very up-to-date. Clara can live without a man, but she likes her fun. A female Pinkerton. Anthony Burgess, "Marilyn," in One Man's Chorus: Uncollected Writings (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1998), at p. 377.

I am reminded of more than one contemporary star when I ponder these attributes of our "goddesses."

The scene in a restaurant and the look given to Mr. Butterfly by the Italian waiter first glancing at Clara is worth the cost of the film experience in the theater. The look by that waiter is untranslatable and may be only imperfectly understood by any woman living north of Naples. C'imica.

Ms. Placido knew what she was doing in this film by embodying a masculine ideal and desire, even dividing into a duality as "Anna"/"Clara." She is both "The Virgin and St. Anne" and/or the two Marias of Catholic mythology. Schelling's "Clara" also comes to mind. ("'The Da Vinci Code': A Movie Review" and "Duality in Christian Feminine Identity.")

The cinematographer (Martin Ruhe) cannot resist underlining Clara's identification with Venus/Mary Magdalen by establishing a relationship with the various Italian canvases depicting "The Birth of Venus" (Boticelli) or Titian's "Reclining Nudes" or "Venus." Clara emerges from the waters of life. Clara's erotic power is a miracle of the sophistication and allure that seems so easy for European actresses and increasingly rare among American women subjected to the infantilizing and dehumanizing forces that are rampant in Hollywood. This is to say nothing of currently popular forms of feminist puritanism or hostility to eros. (Compare "Genius and Lust" with "Not One More Victim.")

Any American young female movie star's quest to be thin, while possessing suitably impressive breasts and remaining nineteen years-old forever, makes the challenge of becoming a woman -- in the full meaning of the word -- an impossibly difficult one. The alternative to becoming a woman is death. Ms. Placido is, in the full meaning of the word, a WOMAN. ("Master and Commander.")

The one masculine or sexually ambiguous female in the movie is Clooney's "client," working for his "enemy-friend" (the gray-haired villain Mr. Butterfly might become or who embodies the protagonist's future self). She is the woman purchasing a gun (rifle) from Clooney's character. This female character is also "Mr. Butterfly's" feminine side. She does not end well. "If you live by the sword then you may expect to die by the sword."

This movie reverses Puccini's and David Belasco's story of the American sailor, Pinkerton, who arrives in a land he does not know, enjoys a sexual encounter with a woman whose disgrace at his hands results in her death, then withdraws to his American wife and the comforts of imperialism. It is not Cio-Cio San who falls in love in this version of the story, but Pinkerton-Clooney, as it were, who is undone by passion. Ironically, this movie which is about masculinity, subverts the masculine principle in favor of female knowingness. Gender transfers are subtle and successful at the conclusion of the work. Clara becomes Pinkerton. ("The Soldier and the Ballerina.")

Mr. Clooney's hit-man character "lives in hell," as he is told by a theologically-minded priest who has been reading Kierkegaard -- played beautifully by Paolo Bonacelli -- echoing the reflections of the Dutch theologican Miskotte and the poetry of Dante:

"Even though we are bound to take ourselves as our point of departure in every sphere in which revelation and faith are discussed, we cannot really take ourselves as our point of departure. We have to make a more precise distinction. We can say, for example, using the word in a good sense, that faith has its own kind of autonomy, that it is personal, that it is chosen in freedom, but also, enclosed within itself, entails freedom, creates it and sustains it. But there must be a place 'somewhere' where the criterion of the truth is not to be found with me. There must be a 'somewhere' where man can say in the absolute sense that he is not lonely, that he is not alone and neither a creator nor a judge. There must be a 'somewhere' where he has, less in ecstasy than with a sober sense of what is true, to feel permitted to understand that he is understood and known and that he has been chosen."

Edward Schillebeeckx, God is New Each Moment (New York & London: Continuum, 1983), pp. 67-68. (emphasis added)

John Lennon's words force themselves into the mind: "Come together over me!"

Redemption is to "choose" or affirm this moment that I am. To "be" is to love and be loved. "Hell," says the philosophical priest, "is a place without love." This is to describe hell as an absolute absence of the Other. Hell is fragmentation or division from others and within the self. Hell is to be unchosen, even by oneself, or not to own one's own life. Hell is an inner landscape externalized in the movie as a bleak terrain of gray hills and cold metallic colors -- like Mr. Clooney's hair and non-descript wardrobe -- also as the rifle which Mr. Butterfly fashions that is himself. ("The Wanderer and His Shadow.")

Mr. Butterfly is in the midst of a transformation. Butterflies are symbols of the soul and freedom. A butterfly is self-becoming. Mr. Butterfly is recovering from Kierkegaard's "Sickness Unto Death." (I hope to see "Salt" and to review the film here.)

Mr. Butterfly, like St. Francis, has wandered out to T.S. Eliot's "Wasteland," without God ("middle age"?), where the air is cold and clear. Emptiness surrounds this struggling soul, as he journeys from Inferno, to Purgatorio -- the first stirrings of a conscience -- then to Paradiso, love, the fulfillment of the metanoia journey for Man, as the beloved Other is finally recognized to be more important than the self, achieving a kind of redemption (or woman's wisdom) through self-giving or sacrifice in an ambiguous ending.

We are invited to decide what happens next. I opt for Mr. Butterfly's recovery and the couple's move to Englewood, New Jersey. ("'Michael Clayton': A Movie Review.")

These are the stations of Carl Jung's life-journey -- also the migrations of the Christian soul enduring the "stations of the cross" -- that is identified in mythology by Joseph Campbell with the "hero's quest" where Anima is self-realization through self-giving passion, eros. C.S. Lewis in "The Allegory of Love" has charted much of this territory of the soul, of which the Troubadors sang, even providing inspiration for film-makers in "The Discarded Image." ("'The English Patient': A Movie Review" and "'The Reader': A Movie Review.")

Literary parallels for the mystery of identity, as a search, are common in the great masters of the espionage and thriller genre: Maugham's "Ashenden" is a clear source here, but Henry James and the "American's" encounter with Europe -- reversals of innocence (American) and guile (Europe) -- is also useful. Mr. Butterfly is Henry James' "Strether Martin" as both a criminal and spiritual seeker. (Compare Henry James' The American with his later novel, The Ambassador.)

Joseph Conrad, John Le Carre, Graham Greene, Tom Stoppard, Michael Frayn, Ward Just have all been fascinated by this masculine territory of purification, passion, penance, and mortality symbolized in the character of a spy or other figure in hiding. "I cannot hide from myself," says Verdi's Otello.

"Where I have flown off to is a secret. I have to remain a private man, reborn into my new existence and comfortably settled into it. I have my memories of course. I have not forgotten how to paint insects, that the cyclic rate of a Sterling Para Pistol Mark 7A is 550 rounds per minute and the muzzle velocity 365 metres per second; nor have I forgotten that it is developed from the last shadow dweller's gun. I can recall quite vividly the basement in Marseilles, Father Benedetto's little garden, the sink-hole in Hong Kong, blood-red wine like the kisses of girls, the workshop in the arches in South London, Visconti and Milo and the others, Galeazzo and Signora Prasca and the exquisite beauty of the plagiara. I shall never forget the view from the loggia."

"You do not naturally, expect me to divulge into whom I metamorphosed. Suffice it to say Mr. Butterfly -- il Signor Farfalla -- still sups at the wild honey of life and is comparatively content. Similarly, he is quite safe."

"Yet I cannot drive Clara from my mind, no matter how I try."

Martin Booth, The American (New York & London: Picador, 2004), at p. 274.

For comparison, see the review attributed to David Denby in The New Yorker, September 27, 2010, at p. 17.