watched downfall in the night, which is what im really posting about.i found the film singularly powerful, with extremely effective use of cinematography. Chern and i were cringing into each other for comfort throughout-- the idea of such devotion, such fixation to an inevitable abstraction- death, or national socialism- is both chilling and terrifying taken from the point of view of the hopeful, such that we feel a terrible need to press into something alive, for a kind of reassurance of life, of humanity. The scenes are extremely haunting: the doctor walking into the abandoned hospital, framed in the door turning, facing an empty room. The suddenness of the bodies; and the turning- to face a roomful of the abandoned old, staring at him with imploring, hopeless moon eyes. the quiet images haunt me most, the relative absence of blood and gore point the mind away from the terror of the physical to register all too painfully the terror of twisted minds: in deadly commitment to an abstraction, we too become abstractions- the frightening bravery of the ubermann. the main figures, though, still so human in those little ways, too closely personal for comfort. okay im not going to go on and bore you [because im not feeling garrulous and am less shell shocked and the paint on the box is dry so i can start to varnish it now]
mellie contemplated 2:56 PM
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