WARNING: SPOILERS
So, I finally got around to watching
Blood Simple. I apologize to everyone, because I was the biggest proponent of the film club from the start, and I feel like I'm the reason it's not happening at the moment. I really do want it to happen eventually, and I definitely am not holding you guys back from starting without me, but I just feel really busy and stressed with other things at the moment. The lack of time to do what I want to do really stresses me out, and I guess I just feel full of anxiety lately.
Talking with my therapist I guess makes me have to confront a lot of things that I normally push away. Like, I know they're there, but I tend to block out a lot of things because they are just too depressing to me. Using drugs was a way of never having to confront the issues that have always bothered me as long as I can remember. Stuff like feeling my life has no meaning--no idea what I want to "do with my life." Stuff like worrying about how I will be alone the rest of my life. Just a lot of stuff that I feel like I
have to confront now and deal with, like it's on some sort of checklist where I have to complete something every single day or I feel like I haven't done my job. I guess I feel a lot of pressure from recovery in this sense--that it's something I have to confront, and clearly it's important to my long-term well being, but it's like I have so many other goals that I put off for so long...my passions or just things I want to improve with, that I put off because my main focus was drugs. Like, I wish I could practice guitar so bad, but I just don't feel I have the time right now. I know, I can hear people saying now:
If you really wanted to play, you would make the time. This is the truth, but I guess I prioritize other things over it. For instance, I've been abusing my body for so long that I feel like I really fucking need to get healthier and work out more and just fucking
try at least, because God knows I don't try enough in life. And I want to focus on reading over music, because I just feel so insecure about being unintelligent, that that really bothers me. I hate that feeling. What can you do about it, ya know?
I guess I have this big conflict about being productive versus doing things that I care about or want to. Because, I mean, that line is a big blur, because if I ultimately follow it to its logical end, that would wind up with me doing drugs again, because what I really want to do is go out and find some crack and smack and just fucking relax. Because I guess when you've been so used to taking the easy way out, that becomes what you really want, even if your good sense tells you that isn't what you
need for long-term happiness. But, like, I always feel the pull between doing things that are good for me versus doing fun, social things. I mean, I guess I can't go out drinking as much as other people my age do. This is the prime in our lives for that sort of thing. I guess other people are just different than me. That's just how I've always felt. Everyone else can go out and get fucked up and it not be a big deal. Like they don't have to worry about it. Sure, they probably worry about a hangover or whatever, but who has to worry more than that? Sometimes thoughts like that lead me into a bad headspace--like that I make everything so much harder for myself than I have to. Nothing can ever--
ever--be easy for me. It's just always been like that. I mean, I don't exactly look at most others and envy them. I like being an individual. But sometimes, I just wish I could make things easier for myself. But that's the way it is. Mostly, I feel some guilt about drinking when things like NA or my therapist make it seem so bad for someone like me. I don't know. I just want to be a normal person my age sometimes. But I guess I kinda fucked that one up a while ago. I really should just think less and not stress about it. I'm young and I have a long life ahead of me. I remember that thought would have used to depress me. I am somewhat indifferent about it now.
I really do want to do movie and book clubs, but I don't really want to add that additional pressure on myself right now, because I already feel a lot of other pressures, which I don't really feel like going too much more into depth here right now, not because it's boring for me to write about, but because I feel like it'd be boring for you guys to read about. I'll get to those eventually, and music and videogames and other stuff hopefully, but I feel like I should concentrate on myself more for a while, because really that is what I've been neglecting so long. It's hard, though. I guess mostly just because it seems like I surround myself with a lot of other normal--no, not even normal...successful--people, so everyone else is pretty much living their own lives. Whatever, I'm not doing that bad. I hate that point where the motivation to quit drugs starts to shrink when you realize that you are still yourself in the same old life you were in before you started doing drugs in the first place.
Okay, onto the movie. Holy shit. What a frightening film. I
wish I had been a bigger part of Coen month if they put out stuff like this a lot. Daniel is right--setting is key here. Texas. Yeah, what a frightening and alien state. I feel like out of all the contiguous states, Texas is the one that most fascinates me and scares me, because it represents something that resembles my deepest insecurities and fears. And yet I find it darkly attractive for some reason. I love whenever movies have those shots of the gigantic oil wells pumping. Large parts of this movie reminded me of
The Thin Blue Line, which is a documentary about a murder in Texas. There is something about the vast landscapes there that really makes murder that much scarier, because the participants find themselves isolated through the gigantic size of the landscape. They are like insects. There is nowhere to run, because even though everything is so big, it's also so empty. Like the fucked-up PI says in the beginning, in Texas, you're on your own.
As Daniel says, there are some great visuals in this. I was also really struck by the sound, and not just by the music (Four Tops FTW!). In so many scenes, there is some ominous repeating noise (whether it's a ticking alarm clock, a fan swooping on the ceiling, or water dripping). I love the line when the cuckolded husband says he's in hell. Because that's really what this movie is to me: it depicts the hell that is human existence on earth. Does anything go right in this movie? And the visuals and sound really push this point forward. Like I said, this is a fucking scary movie. It was almost like I was watching Fearfest on AMC a few weeks early. I love it for that, though, because I love horror movies.
It also reminded me of a Hitchcock movie, in that it follows a group of people ranging from morally ambiguous to pretty damn evil. I thought it went all
Psycho on me and killed off the heroine in the first hour, but the Coens one-upped Hitchcock (is this possible?) and proved me wrong. But while Hitch often followed some pretty fucked-up people, his directorial style did not wallow in the darkness the way it does in this movie. The Coens seem to inhabit this world along with the characters. I love this kind of '80s movie that is almost over-stylized in its darkness. It seems like a Brian DePalma influence (
Carrie is one of the earlier movies that does these kind of crazy camera shots). The 1970's was when directors really started to bring a lot of moral darkness into their films, because of the abolishment of the Hays Production Code that had for so long censored movies and because of the cultural events of the '60s and '70s, but it seems like the '80s took this nihilism and darkness to its Gothic extreme (pretty much everything seemed to be taken to the extreme in the '80s). This is a prime example. God bless '80s horror films, because this might as well be one. I want to watch Monster/Fearfest so damn bad this year.
--Edward
Attack the Block does what few (recent) science fiction films have been able to do successfully, tie a story about space into a current social issue. In this case, we see the plight of the ghetto and it's inhabitants projected against monsters and interstellar fighting. We are shown that violence begets more violence, and that it is up to all of us to decide who we are and what we want to do with our lives. That living in the projects doesn't make you who you are, that heroes do in fact come from the least likely places. Attack the Block also does a surprisingly good job of building an arc for Moses, the leader of the teenage gang, that resonates with the viewer and gives you a feeling of closure when the film ends. Add that in with the effectiveness of the monsters, with their signature glowing fangs, and the excellent direction, and you have a sci-fi film that can rest comfortably in my top 5 of 2011.
