Filed under: Fangirl, Motion picture, Music, Tangents | Tags: A Little Princess, Alfonso Cuarón, Children of Men, Emmanuel Lubezki, Patrick Doyle, Slavoj Žižek
My throat feel like paper and my voice goes here and there. I have a midterm to write on Thursday on the anthropology of “Middle Eastern Society and Culture” but all I can think of are the ways in which tangents lead me to conclusions that can’t be concluded yet, for I’ve only just turned 20. I like seeing tangents in my life, but it’s usually small ones here and there related to film or popular culture and interests rather than real concerns. A bigger and more enduring one hit me recently though. It’s not that big, and maybe not that enduring (maybe seven countable years), but I noticed it and thought it big.
Sean Axmaker interviewed Alfonso Cuarón for GreenCine last year upon the release of Children of Men:
“…you’ve made so many films about children and young adults and people who still have a sense of hope. I think A Little Princess is magical in a very human way.
“That’s the one I love. As I said, I never see my films after they are finished, but the one I love, my memories of it and everything, is A Little Princess. If I would rescue one of my movies, it would be A Little Princess.”
A Little Princess is kind of my favourite movie ever. Cuaron filmed it with his cinematic collaborator cinematographer demigod Emmanuel Lubezki. It was also scored by Patrick Doyle, the man who brought me love for Scottish composers. Throughout junior high I collected whatever bits Doyle left behind on the internet in .mp3 format (way back when Napster was still around) and by high school, my search had expanded to include Cuaron. An imdb search led me to find out he would be adapting P.D. James‘ dystopia: The Children of Men.
Fast forward to to 2007, because that’s about how long it took the film to reach a cinema near me, nearly a decade since I first met Cuaron. He includes a documentary by Slavoj Žižek in the special features on the real issues that are portrayed in his film. How did it happen… I need to understand Zizek for my midterm exam this Thursday and he’ll be my last reading of the semester for the most difficult but most interesting class I’m taking this semester (“Beyond Orientalism”).
It isn’t a long and tangled tangent-course. It’s just one that’s been in the works for years. Emmanuel Lubezki is amazing (listen to him speak here: http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/images/column/2107/lubezki3.mp3).
A smaller tangent happening now includes Hegel and facebook:
Édith Piaf (Milord) → La Vie en Rose → Sylvie Testud → Fear and Trembling, by Amélie Nothomb → Japan → facebook → a boy from school → Fear and Trembling, by Søren Kierkegaard → Hegel → Marx → Frankfurt School → Foucault → Said → area studies.
I should go study for that midterm, or at least the reading on gender I’m supposed to get at (as an aftermath to Said’s Orientalism).
When I grow up I hope to be well-read.
