Saturday, January 24, 2009

Functions


Last night I watched this crazy Japanese film. It was one in the morning by the time we started it, and I was already half asleep. I had never heard of it before, but S. had it lying around and had only watched the first 20 minutes. So, Friday night/Saturday morning we lay on the couches in the basement of Winchester House and turned on what turned out to be, on reflection, an entertaining little distraction.

Five characters with seemingly disjoint story lines eventually end up relating to each other somehow, but they never really do come together. My favorite was the first character introduced who repeatedly must murder his wife because she won't stay dead. Or she's dead, but keeps appearing back at home when he returns. But the best part is that she then tries to kill him. Repeatedly. She grabs him from inside the full bathtub, pulls him in to drown him. She is able to shoot off her appendages to attack him after he uselessly cuts her into pieces in an attempt to keep her dead. She blows fire at him after he kills her again and burns her.

The colors are amazing, scenes shot beautifully. I must say, though, that nothing much happened. Interesting though, and I was really just too tired to care. Maybe I'll like it more if I watch it when I'm awake, conscious, and so can actually pay attention.

The English assassin in the film is obsessed with one question: What is your function? He asks everyone he meets.

What is your function?

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Excerpts

'Many things are gone, they ceased to exist long before vanishing into oblivion. Things like faces, names, words, and also a pair of scissors lost last summer, as well as a few books, the fate of which is still a mystery to this day. Unimpeded, impatience lapses into indifference, making it impossible to distinguish one from the other. According to dictionaries, "monumentality" is derived from the concentration of power apparatuses - such as military forces, wealth, intelligence services, universities, and industries - into one locus.'

'Many people have gone mad, without even realizing it, in an attempt to connect their image (in the mirror or photograph) with themselves. In the disruption between "oneself" and "self" in/on the image, the mind loses its habits of recognizing its own presence. Insomnia is capable of prolonging only a chain of comparisons.'

'We talk only because of a persistent desire to understand what is it that we are saying. As a result, we allow ourselves to speculate that, all in all, we have fallen, by change, into a distorted phrase - "here and now" - the "correctness" of which, when uttered repeatedly, despends on how we disappear into it.'

--Arkadii Dragomoschenko, from "Dust" 2008