Bad Leftenant

"In the most recent turn of the dialectical screw, there seems to be emerging a trend of European art film directors making Miramax-level sequels to macho American crime films. First there was Herzog's brilliant "reimagining" (as the marketing vampires say) of Abel Ferrera's Bad Lieutenant, and now rumors are circulating that Danish provocateur Lars von Trier has been talking to Martin Scorcese about making a sequel to the latter's 1976 film Taxi Driver. The rumor is that the film would feature the now-sexagenarian Robert DeNiro reprising his role as the homicidal loner Travis Bickle. I've always regarded Taxi Driver as the most interesting example of a fundamentally repugnant cinema. Scorcese's early work, with its machismo and depoliticized narratives of urban poverty, can be reduced to a thought experiment: what if we took the revolutionary political consciousness out of Italian neorealism? Taxi Driver is certainly his most critical film, by which I mean, since Scorcese is the Enemy, his most self-critical film, even if it is so in a merely 'unconscious' way, that is, in a way that is only real for me as I project my beliefs onto the film. One would think that the only reason von Trier would take on a classic of American (sorry, "United Statesian") cinema would be to destroy the cinema of this country which he so openly reviles from the inside, as he attempted more modestly in his "Land of Opportunity" films Dogville and Manderlay (the misogyny of which is probably the only thing Scorcese and von Trier have in common: can you imagine them having a conversation?). But maybe not. Perhaps von Trier, like Herzog, is genuinely drawn to that one really transcendentally great thing about American crime cinema: its misanthropy."

- Roger Ebert

Alberto Caeiro - Preacher of those truths

Yesterday the preacher of those truths of his

Talked to me again.

He talked about the suffering of the working classes

(Not about the people who suffer, who are the ones who really suffer when all’s said and done).

He talked about the injustice of some having money,

And other people going hungry, but I don’t know if it’s hunger for food,

Or hunger for someone else’s dessert.

He talked about whatever gets him mad.

He should be happy because he can think about the unhappiness of others!

He’s stupid if he doesn’t know other people’s unhappiness is theirs,

And isn’t cured from the outside,

Because suffering isn’t like running out of ink,

Or a trunk not having iron bands!

There being injustice is like there being death.

I would never take a step to change

What they call the the world’s injustice.

A thousand steps taken for that

Would only be a thousand steps.

I accept injustice like I accept a stone not being a perfect circle,

And a cork tree not growing into a pine or an oak.

I cut an orange in two, and the two parts can’t be equal.

Which one was I unjust to — I, who am going to eat them both?

(undated)

I’m glad I see with my eyes and not the pages I’ve read.

(undated)