Tuesday, June 25, 2019

yesterday i saw the emperor's naked army marches on, and today i saw newman. sometimes i make too much out of the random occurrence and call it uncanny, but i think these films are connected in spirit, and in the force of the the central character, which is a real person in both cases, and they're documentaries, and yet they are each so packed with angry conviction they seem both real and hyperreal. the guy in the emperor's naked army is possessed by the need to confront the perpetrators of murder after the end of ww2 in japan. there's a scene where he faces one of the murderers who refuses to talk and he pounces on him and pummels him in his own house. it takes a minute for your brain to register, and then your heart leaps up and pummels him too. joe newman in newman, had the same kind of angry conviction, and a perpetual motion machine that the patent office denied, and his rage becomes the life of the story, kind of a perpetual motion machine itself, the energy that is more than goes in, and in the end he rages at everyone who would deny his vision or steal his machine, and almost pummels the filmmaker by the time the film is finished he's dismantled the machine and dies of a heart attack three days later. maybe i said too much but it's not like a plotted movie, it can't be spoiled. it's that conviction, and their eternal fight brute reality of human systems of injustice these radical souls can't abide. 
maybe you will watch these two films, or two of your own uncanny choosing, and see what you think. 

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