Do you like your face? Do you wish it to remain in the front of your skull, presenting a somewhat more pleasant/less visceral view of your head? Would you view it a shame if this face were torn, ripped, torn, sawed, smoked, torn, blasted or - dare we say it? - rocked off? Then, simpleton, please move on. Remove yourself from this moment, forget we ever met. Blog? What Blog? What's a blog? Sounds like someone wrapped bacon around some summer sausage and lacked creativity!
Those who wish to part with said face, proceed.
AT YOU OWN RISK BITCHES.
Song Name: "In the new year"
Band Name: The Walkmen
Moment in Question: 0:40
File Under: Cardiac arrest
Today at the record store, I was choosing between three albums - The Hold Steady's Stay Positive, Okkervil River's The Stand Ins and You & Me by The Walkman. I picked the last one, even though I wasn't sure if I'd ever heard a song off it. I could be positive of only one Walkmen song in my life, "New Year's Eve" off of Bows and Arrows, and I know that because I was a lonely teenager and downloading songs after a blanket search of "New Year's Eve" seemed like the prudent thing to do. Conversely, I just paid over $50 to see The Hold Steady open for the Drive-By Truckers, and The Stage Names has made me ejaculate on myself numerous times. Then I previewed You & Me track four, "In the New Year." Based on the 20-second clip that was made up almost wholly with the tortured clangs from the intro, I bought the Walkman album. And then I didn't even KNOW man!
(If you suck and don't buy this album after reading this article, there's no good live video of it on youtube, but there are a few fan vids. Do NOT - NOT - watch any of these without reading the whole article! Because you might want to buy it, and the only true way to experience this song the first time is to have the biggest fucking can headphones on and just listen to it ABSOLUTELY MASSACRE EVERY BIT OF YOUR MIND.)
I'm a firm believer that art mediums can touch each other and get all hot and bothered, rolling up against some intersecting experiences. That said, that single organ riff tells a story with much more force than any novelist could ever hope for. It sounds the deeps of the human soul with more veracity than any poem and represents the gambit of human emotion with more stark vivid light than any film. It plunges from your ear drums down a long fucking tube, bursts through that bitch, sinks into your muscle tissue, your blood cells and your sinew, into the very essence of who the fuck you thought you were 40 seconds ago and it cleans you. You feel absolutely dazed. It has, in affect, sucked you dry but with music. Hamilton Leithauser wails like a lost banshee, like Grace Slick and Robert Plant got fucked shitfaced and did each other for a lark. The whole thing feels loose and gummy and like terrible doctors who dress up real nice for the funeral. It is a destructive force. It destroys you with its perfection.
Welcome, love. The canon hopes you enjoy your stay.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Momentary Greatness: The Walkmen - "In the New Year"
Review: Rachel Getting Married
About halfway through watching Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married I couldn't remember how it began. Literally, I plunged into my mind and came up with nothing, nothing save the scene where recovering addict Kym (played by Anne Hathaway) departs from the mental institution and some tiny clips of the opening credits. This is absolutely 100% not a bad thing; RGM may be a non-stop blitz of emotional turmoil, awkward family situations and beautiful music, but that is not to say things did not blend. If anything, as exhibited by my momentary amnesia about the beginning of the film, the film could have used a little less blending.
Essentially, the title of the film says it all; the entire film revolves around a week's worth of festivities in preparation for the wedding of Rachel (Kym's sister, played delicately by Rosmarie DeWitt) to Sidney (featuring TV on the Radio's Tunde Adebimpe bringing real warmth to the role). More to the point, however, is that Kym has just been released from a rehab clinic, bringing a couple of truckloads worth of emotional baggage to add to the already mounting stress of the event. The film represents that stress particularly in the supporting cast of Kym and Rachel's father, Paul (an absolutely defining performance by Bill Irwin); Sidney's best man, Kieran (Mather Zickle); Rachel's initial maid of honor, Emma (Anisa George); and the sister's single mother, Abby (hey everyone! It's Debra Winger!)
From the moment we see Kym and Rachel existing in the same space, with Kym quickly making a stab at a joke about (of all funny topics available) an old eating disorder, we are lead to understand that this is a train wreck just dying to happen. Hathaway does some truly provocative emotive contorting with Kym, bringing some of her latent Princess Diaries spunk to such an emotional meltdown. The effect, particularly when combined with Rachel's coexisting urges to be patient and stubborn, creates a toxic air around almost any situation where the two are seen together. It is in these scenes where the movie pulls out its heavy artillery, with so much shouting and pouting that it's a wonder the whole things comes off as anything but shrill. Rather than stir the pot, Demme's camera observes these events with an amount of intimacy that blurs the line between viewing this as a creation and as something much more real.
Whether it's real or not makes no difference, because Demme's sense of pacing and assumed urge to place these events on their stunted emotional timeline gives the audience just enough time for that to not matter. Not once in my viewing did I feel as though this break-neck speed was too fast for the film; the difficulty for each scene in succession ramps up so violently that the speed is the ultimate helper. After a truly excruciating wedding rehearsal toast, a scream-filled confrontation, an accidental reminder of Kym's particularly troubled past (it's a bit of a spoiler, but it comes up quite a bit) that knocks Paul for a loop, a car accident, etc., etc., the feeling of wanting to know the what the next mode for the film was shouted down by the sheer thrill of it all.
Speaking of thrill, this film is fucking filled with it. Outside of the truly meaty Kym and Rachel scenes is an essential weaving of the other aspects of preparing such a monumental event as a wedding. There are numerous scenes of the combination of the two families (particularly one involving a dish-washing contest) that illicit a true and saccarine form of joy. There are several scenes of people simply performing, simply dancing, simply existing in the excitement for these two people. In a scene where Rachel reveals that she's pregnant (a scene that is actually shoved right in the middle of a massive fight between Rachel and Kym), Paul reacts by dervishly prancing and screaming, succumbing to a jubilant atmosphere that tends to exude from the pictures' more hopeful moments.
For all the great side characters, for all the momentous moments of music, of movement, of worry and excitement and union, however, any talk of this film would be a mistake if it did not give special note to Hathaway's performance. Kym, who exists in essentially a one-dimensional void, is a character that deserves to be shrill and unlikable, and would have been so in the hands of almost anyone else. With her telling thrown glances, her perfected exasperation, just the simple pain that is visible in her eyes throughout, Hathaway decides to fuck with an understanding of what she's supposed to be almost right alongside those almost blatantly damning moments. When Kym complains to Paul that Rachel cheated by bringing up her pregnancy in the middle of a heated fight, hatred doesn't pour in. Kym is hateable, but she is never evil. Many other films and actresses have sorely missed that distinction.
Rachel Getting Married does not exist among a genre of slice-of-life films; it ascends immediately to the top of that genre's highest mountain. It is a film of dominating, relentless energy, of a human vitality far beyond most films trying to present true family strife. I don't remember the beginning, but I also have come to believe that I don't have to, because forcing my way back works against a current this film builds, a current that every character gets swept up in until the very end of the film. This film deserves endless praise and Hathaway deserves an Oscar nomination not for a performance, not for a representation, but for a display so nuanced that it seems exhaustingly alive.
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