Entry 11:

Dear Geoffrey,

It's been a cold, rainy day, and I had the misfortune to be out in some of it. Got a ticket yesterday because we had forgotten to have our inspection ticket renewed, so I took the car into the gas station this morning. They told me one of my tires had dry rot, so I'd have to get it replaced; then they told me I should really buy two new tires, as they would be better balanced that way. "Dry rot" sounds like an emotional condition of some kind. No wonder I seek out ontological beauty in the movies.

Speaking of which, I don't really fear that capturing moments of being on-screen will disappear with digitized technology. There will always be film artists who are captivated by the welling-up of spirit in material fact. Recently I saw a film called The Circle (again Iranian) which had its good and bad points, but there was a beautiful, long-held shot of a prostitute smoking a cigarette in a bus while eavesdropping on the other passengers. (Women smoking in public in Iran is a big no-no, part of the point of the scene.) It allowed me to pass into that contemplative space of watching anyone zone out. Like Joan Fontaine ironing in Letter From an Unknown Woman. I remember a scene like that also in Blue Velvet, where Dean Stockwell was dancing on a porch and the plot stopped and it was all very dreamy--my favorite moment from that film. I also confess a guilty affection for David Lynch's feature spin-off of Twin Peaks, Fire Walk With Me, especially for the languid dance sequences in the club, which are very sexy.

Which brings me to In the Mood for Love, probably the pivotal film of this year's crop. What did you think of it? I don't say it's a masterpiece; the script could have been better in places, but it weaves a spell, permits the moment to dilate. And the sensuous weave of the two leads, Maggy Chung and Tony Leong, their costumes alone, her 1950s-60s period dresses, his silk suits, make me want to be in that place half the time. The film is like a piece of music, a tango (another tango for Wong Kar-wai, after Happy Together) that languorously circles around its chord changes without ever resolving them, just as the two of them never consummate their longing. Surely the appetite for this kind of movie will persist even in the face of Gladiator. Young people are drawn to it, at least artsy young people; Wong Kar-wai is becoming an underground star. Asian cinema will keep us honest, ontological beautywise, in the years to come, maybe.

I saw an incredible Chinese mainland film called Platform in the New York Film Festival, by the same young guy who made Xiao Wu, which was also brilliant. He's a disciple of Hou Hsiao-hsien but has his own rock 'n' roll soul. Platform, in fact, is about an agitprop Maoist theater troupe that undergoes political thaw and becomes a rock group. Demand it be booked into your local theater.

I gotta run. Are you tempted by Memento? Maybe we can go together.

Yours,
Phillip