“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
Throughout my entire life especially during my early years inside the Catholic Church, I was told about this Russian novel THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV. Being over 900 pages long divided into twelve books and an epilogue, completing this novel always felt like a journey that would never be completed. This 19th Century novel is filled with philosophical musings, observations of that historical society and large ideas revolving around the importance of virtues like love, faith, and the importance of philosophical ideas like rationalism. After completing the novel, Dostoevsky famously said that this novel reflects everything he has ever wanted to say about the human experience. As the most famous quote from this novel explains above, the quest of any human life is to live with virtue and love. Lacking these things can send any person into a spiral of despair and anger that they may never recover from. In this short review, I will give some background on Fyodor Dostoevsky. Then, I will dive into an analysis of the story inside the book and finally, a completed review. Fyodor Dostoevsky was born in Moscow in 1821. He showed at an early age no interest in science, mathematics and military engineering preferring to dabble in art and literature. This open-mindedness would get him in trouble after he had written a couple of novels as his interest in socialism and possession of a banned pamphlet from his literary idol Nikolai Gogol called a LETTER TO GOGOL got him arrested and forced to face a firing squad. Instead of being executed, he was sent to Siberia to serve four years of hard labor. Upon returning, Dostoevsky got himself involved in various publications but could never create a life for himself due to his gambling addiction and badly reviewed writing. His most famous novel CRIME AND PUNISHMENT was written during this time. After he married his second wife and started his own family, he continued to have financial issues. Eventually moving back to Russia from Germany, this was the most successful period of his life writing the novel DEMONS, THE IDIOT and THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV. Shortly after THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV was released, Dostoevsky died of a brain hemorrhage in early 1881. THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV is a deep and complex story. The main story does not kick in until the resolution of Book IX. The novel is loosely based on the Karamazov family, Father Fyodor, twice divorced and the patriarch of a family with upper class wealth who is murdered mysteriously during Book IX. Fyodor has three kids: his oldest Dmitri, an impulsive, risk-taking alpha male who is in love with Grushenka. Dmitri has a personality that could be perceived as potentially bipolar. The middle child is Ivan, a professional intellectual whose own philosophy on life fails him when he realizes that he may be responsible for his father’s murder. Finally, there is the younger brother Alexei, also known as Alyosha, who is a young practicing monk trying to live a noble, spiritual life. The book ends with a trial for one of the sons who may be guilty of killing his father while the two remaining brothers do their best in trying to save him while grappling with their own conscious and thoughts about their father. This main story only makes up about one-third of this book. The novel goes deep into analyzing each of the family member’s personalities and character as well as entire chapters dedicated to side characters. Through the first half, the book is very philosophical with many religious overtones and analysis. After all these various themes and ideas have been planted, Dostoevsky reveals the main story at the heart of this novel at the end. This part of the novel is definitely the highlight of the book. I have always been told that Russian novels are dense and filled with lots of ideas. In fact, too many ideas that make the novels feel like they lack a general sense of direction. THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV definitely fits into this category. This novel since its release in 1880 and a year before Dostoevsky left the mortal realm is used for philosophy classes. It is used by the Orthodox Church and other religions to analyze its teachings and philosophies. And you will often find college literature students diving into the novel when studying the artistic output of Eastern Europe or Russia. I love much of the philosophy in this book. One of the most famous recent video game series, ASSASSIN’S CREED took its own motto for the assassins, “EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED” from this novel. Dostoevsky also analyzes the difference between intellectuals and the common folk. With recent world events that have occurred over the past few years, this quote explains in clear detail while the people with the simplest thoughts are not only the happiest, but also more likely to be honest and more difficult to manipulate. “The more stupid one is, the closer one is to reality. The more stupid one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence squirms and hides itself. Intelligence is unprincipled, but stupidity is honest and straightforward.” Despite this, the novel has some flaws. First, some of the conversations between characters are often filled with long monologues. As a person who has met quite a few Russians over my life, these long monologues do not feel Russian. I am used to short and to the point conversations with thoughts condensed down into short summaries. These conversations between characters do not differentiate their personalities enough and they are filled with interruptions and bizarre diversions that are common with manic depressive or hyperactive individuals. These conversations often took me out of the book. This leads directly into my second complaint, the length. Dostoevsky could have said everything he needed to say with about 400 less pages. The novel is a chore to get through with some stretches (Like Book X) feeling like an extra add-on that felt unnecessary for the type of ideas he was trying to portray. But even accounting for these criticisms, I still think reading this book would make anyone think about their own life and how satisfied you are with the decisions you have made up to this point. This aspect of the novel is the reason why it continues to fascinate people 140 plus years after it was released in Tsarist Russia. If you can find time, dive into Russian literature and start with this classic from Fyodor Dostoevsky. Next week: OPPENHEIMER!
0 Comments
THE LIBERAL ARTS PROBLEM: THE PROBLEM WITH FILM REVIEWS REGARDING THE NEW INDIANA JONES FILM7/16/2023 A few weeks back, one of my best friends and I went to see the new INDIANA JONES movie on release day. Besides the fact that the movie theater was only 20% full (Another topic for the future), the movie was given mostly negative reviews. As the film has matriculated through our culture the past couple of weeks, the score has balanced out to a more realistic median. But since the movie is likely going to lose money for Disney and LucasFilm, how much of an impact did this vocally loud group of negative reviewers have on this film? This is a topic that has fascinated me over the past couple of years. Back in 2018 when the Wes Anderson ISLE OF DOGS came out, he was accused of cultural appropriation by multiple journalists. Despite the fact that the filmmaker went out of his way to hire voice actor Kunichi Nomura to review the Japanese cultural aspects of the movie for authenticity. Like is often the case in our anti-intellectual present-day outrage culture, the opinions on this movie seemed misguided. Another recent example was LICORICE PIZZA, a movie about growing up in the mid-1970s in the Valley of California. A character who is portrayed as an opportunist for anyone who has half a brain uses a derogatory Asian accent to talk with his wife. When we meet him again, he is doing the same thing with a different Asian wife. This became enough of a controversy that TIME Magazine featured it in an article. Movie reviews and film analysis have only gotten worse since then. After giving a brief summary of my own personal review of the new INDIANA JONES, I will look into two factors which have destroyed present day film reviewers and is causing the industry to make political and social statements that are misguided and alienating. Feel free to comment back with your own opinions on this issue.
INDIANA JONES and the DIAL OF DESTINY is a good film. Since there are four other movies to compare this current iteration to, let’s do a quick INDIANA JONES story checklist. Adventure film with memorable set pieces: CHECK Story based around a historical relic from the past that may have supernatural or religious elements: CHECK. Indiana Jones has a notable and memorable sidekick: CHECK. The villains of the movie are Nazis: CHECK The soundtrack is done by John Williams: CHECK The DIAL of DESTINY feels like an Indiana Jones movie. The main difference for fans of this series is that this franchise has existed for 42 years, and the protagonist (Harrison Ford) has reached his 80s in real life. So, his action scenes minus the 25-minute opener that takes place at the end of World War II with a de-aged Indiana are slightly more toned down. But once the movie gets started, it never stops. The plot revolves around a device called the Antikythera (Based on a real life historical mathematical device) that has been broken up into two pieces so its power can never be used. Indiana’s competition for this device is Dr. Jurgen Voller played by the irreplaceable Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen. After the film opens, the race is on to acquire both pieces of the device, combine them into one entity which will activate it, and use the power of the Antikythera to change history. One of the biggest surprises to me was actress Phoebe Waller-Bridge who goes along with Jones on the journey while having her own personal motivation for acquiring the device. The movie is entertaining and when the device inevitably activates at the end (SPOILERS), the ending takes an incredible risk that pays off the many years that Indiana Jones has studied and tried to acquire historical devices as an archaeologist. Some of the common criticisms of the movie is that Indiana is a broken man. From my point of view, this is wrong. As a character who has aged into his later years and has plenty of personal regret, this key development of his character is important as it explains his mindset at the end of the film when he finds himself in a different time and place. My only complaints about this film are minimal. Mads Mikkelson is such a wonderful actor especially in many of his native Danish films that he feels wasted again in this movie. Like DOCTOR STRANGE and the third FANTASTIC BEASTS movie, an actor that can engage in complicated character studies feels very one dimensional as a Nazi scientist. There is another young teen boy in the Short Round tradition that also feels like a waste. That is why this film feels most comparable to me with TEMPLE of DOOM. While the Ark of the Covenant in RAIDERS of the LOST ARK and the Holy Grail from LAST CRUSADE had religious elements, the Antikythera also has supernatural elements revolving around an ancient Greek scientist and time travel. This is comparable to the historical Sankara Stones in TEMPLE OF DOOM which activate when Indiana speaks the name of Shiva. The outlier of these films is still the worst of the five, INDIANA JONES and the CRYSTAL SKULL, which added an alien supernatural aspect to the movie that actually feels out of place with the classic Indiana Jones story. But these are minor complaints. This is a very good movie that dives into the nostalgia you had for many of the characters from the previous movie while wrapping the film series up satisfactorily. So why is Indiana Jones not doing well in the theater? Media corporations are a main part of the problem. Too many corporations especially on the entertainment side seem very interested in pushing social and political change through entertainment. No matter how you feel about politics from a conservative side (STRANGE WORLD) or liberal angle (See the aforementioned ISLE OF DOGS and LICORICE PIZZA above), people are just not interested in discussing political or social justice issues inside of animated or adventure movies. Plus, these criticisms allow the studios to blame incorrectly a “racist” or “closed-minded” audience instead of grappling with the fact that the movie was flat out bad. STRANGE WORLD: 5.7 out of 10 on IMDB LIGHTYEAR: 6.1 out of 10 on IMDB This allows Disney or the talent involved to blame the poor performance on a particular social problem while ignoring the fact that the movie as a whole is not very good. In twenty years when the present-day politics has evolved to something completely different, how many people are going to revisit LIGHTYEAR and brag about how fantastic the movie was? From an evergreen perspective, the movie will not be remembered as a classic of American cinema. That is the goal that every film should be striving towards. This is why CASABLANCA 84 years later is still a watchable and entertaining film. Finally, we have to acknowledge our degraded review culture. Here are three reviews (Here, Here, and Here) of INDIANA JONES that are so badly written, I thought these came out of MAD Magazine. Whether being lectured about “Black people dying first” in the first review which apparently is part of an imaginary scorecard or the movie failing the pointless and imaginary Bechdel test with social justice commentary in the second review or this hilarious quote that taints an otherwise solid review from the LOS ANGELES TIMES, “For the most part, “Dial of Destiny” tries to steer clear of the exoticizing First World gaze and monkey-brained racist stereotyping that has so often marred the series.” movie reviewers are so full of shit now that they don’t realize how their social justice rants paint them as out-of-touch, self-important adults who all regret getting that Bachelor of Arts degree at their university. These aren’t even the worst cases. Go to YouTube and enter in the search, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny Review.” Here is what you get. Most of these reviews are negative. These reviewers have a huge influence with many videos sitting between 500,000 views to multi-millions in a few cases. While some like CRITICAL DRINKER and DEEPFOCUSLENS are great reviewers with an often insightful and hilarious perspective, most of these videos are just click bait. Here is my summary of most of these individuals, “Let me find something I don’t like and make a big deal out of it.” In the case of one of my favorite podcasters Kevin Smith and his FATMAN BEYOND podcast, the focus seemed to be on WHAT THEY BELIEVED THE FILM SHOULD BE instead of analyzing what the film actually is. So many people love these films from our childhood because not only were they well made, but they were entertaining. We have reached a point in our postmodern culture where we can’t even appreciate the things our culture gives us anymore because it doesn’t fulfill an escalated standard inside our nostalgia-tinged minds. See THE LAST JEDI as another example of this. Until our culture starts to evolve or snap back on this new normal, movie analysis and film reviews are going to continually be ruined by self-involved parasites. And if the film industry does not wake up to this problem soon, streaming a film may become the only way for you to see the next blockbuster. Next week: My review of the Russian novel THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV. Have a good week everyone! |
AuthorEXPERT OF SOME Archives
October 2024
|