To get the content warnings for this film you just read the Dirlewanger Brigade’s wikipedia page
is it good? It’s absolutely masterful at giving you the sensory experience of being a terrified child during the Nazi ethnic cleansing of Belarus, I’ll tell you THAT. While the camerawork is sometimes very focused, such as centering so thoroughly on Fiyora or Glasha’s faces that the background distorts and blurs, at other times it floats shakily through scenes of chaotic violence or skims past absolute atrocity quickly enough to give you no more than a glimpse, which honestly is more than enough when paired with this film’s sound design. Had the camera lingered on a heap of naked corpses it risks getting tasteless or gruesome, which is not the vibe aimed for here, but getting just a glimpse of the pile after several minutes of the sound of those fucking flies ovewhelming everything and knowing there are bodies nearby, but not expecting that many… it’s well done! Utterly fucking horrifying! My brain keeps chewing on the parallel at the end, too, between the Nazi officer who rants about his policy of killing children to make sure that they don’t grow up as inferior races who spread the disease of communism, and then, after, an utterly broken Fiyora shooting a poster of Hitler to pieces, mentally rewinding the horrors of WWII as if yearning to go back and do whatever it takes to stop it all before it begins… until he gets to a baby picture, and hesitates, because even if that’s baby Hitler, that’s a baby, drawing a line between humanity and monstrosity.
Is it fun? I mean the bit where a bunch of Nazis get shot to shit is kinda cathartic but fun is really not what we’re here for.
Is it queer? No.
Have you seen Come And See? How did you recover? What are you watching this week? If you’re struggling under a giant to-watch list, pick something beginning with I and tell me about it!
Oh it’s a guy I love to see (in Kurosawa films)! It’s Japan’s Saddest Man, Takashi Shimura! In a starring role aaaaaassssssssss… Japan’s Saddest Man!
Is it good? I wonder if this is one of the earliest examples of “characters are fobbed off by a dizzying array of bureaucrats sending them in circles”? It’s certainly an iconic example, with every department coming up with an excuse for why cleaning up the cesspool and building a park isn’t their job. It’s also pretty iconic, the guy in the hospital listing off all the lies the doctors will tell someone rather than give them a fatal stomach cancer diagnosis, and the doctor proceeding to deliver each one word for word while Watanabe just gets sadder and more distressed with each excuse. It’s almost comical, sometimes, how profoundly sad and pathetic Shimura can get while portraying Watanabe’s desperate search for meaning in his waning life, and I love that the solution—the parks proposal he penned years ago—is one of the first shots in the film. You can see the It’s A Wonderful Life influence in this film, but whereas there the driver for almost all of the problems is capitalistic greed and the resultant money issues, here’s it’s the deliberately ineffectual maze of Japanese bureaucracy. Watanabe has worked quietly and played by the rules all his life, and it’s gotten him the opposite of George Bailey’s situation—tons of money he has no idea how to enjoy, and a distant son and daughter-in-law who can’t stand him. It’s really delightful to see the amount of energy that fills the character once he realizes what he can do, and really fun to see him very politely bulldozing the ineffectual bureaucracy—another section chief promises to look at his proposal, and he knows that that’s a polite way of fobbing him off, so he simply remains in his seat, forcing the other chief to actually read the proposal because he can’t be seen to not read it. He brushes off yakuza intimidation with a huge, beaming, slightly unhinged smile because when they ask “do you want to die?!” he already knows that he’s going to anyway so he’s not afraid. And it’s so lovely that the mothers who asked for the park all attend his funeral, weeping in much greater distress than Watanabe’s family or colleagues. The cop’s description of how Watanabe spent his last hours, sitting on a swing in the park he got built, enjoying the snow and singing a song he loved, actually made me cry. He actually is dead at the end, not seeing another universe where he doesn’t exist—he’s already terrified that in a world where he was never born nothing is different because he’s made such little impact—but you’re happy for him, because he achieved something that outlives him. Absolutely gorgeous film.
Is it fun? It’s about a man dying from cancer but it’s often pretty funny—the sequence of the doctor’s lies to patients, Watanabe’s brother’s lecherous theories about what Watanabe’s been up to, Toyo’s nicknames for her coworkers, Watanabe’s super polite bulldozing of the bureaucrats… He dies two-thirds of the way through the film and the rest is in flashbacks which are, while sometimes very sad, are more often moving and joyous. The scene where he pays attention to a sunset for the first time in thirty years is in black and white, but so beautifully lit that you get the vibe perfectly.
Is it queer? No. Though I’m not familiar with what cinematic queercoding looked like outside of Hollywood in the 50s, so I may have missed something.
Is it good? Very stylistically polished—the powerful and unsubtle colour scheme is very love-it-or-hate-it, but it’s undeniable that it’s an intentional style very well achieved. Given how much dithering straight critics will do about whether or not a character is trans, and given the ending of this film, I think it’s fair in this instance to make the lighting, set design and costumes all as subtle as a brick to a cop’s face. You can’t deny that Owen is trans; the tension and tragedy is in his denial and fear, and Justice Smith plays it remarkably well with his hunched body language, downturned eyes, and wavering efforts to pitch up his naturally deep voice. This is a rare case where casting a cis man (openly not a straight man, but a cis one) as a trans woman is a solid choice because Owen is so intensely closeted. I also like that the movie works whether you think Maddy is correct about their connection to The Pink Opaque, or if she’s deep into a delusion that helps her cope with her shitty life; either way, Owen is suffering because he’s just too terrified to accept a truth about who he is. Maddy sees that as entirely a personal issue for Owen, but the setting of the film is the oppressive emptiness and homogeneity of the suburbs, where Owen is the only nonwhite character we see aside from his mother and a sex worker who’s glimpsed for half a second, where he lives with a father who is a subtly aggressive presence for most of the film and whose almost every appearance involves him questioning Owen’s maturity, masculinity, or both. There’s a lot of good stuff in how the film is structured (such as the timeskips and the placement of the music numbers) that hints to Maddy being correct, which adds an extra layer to the horror that all of this is being done to Owen specifically to torture him, but if you take the film as just being what the real world can be like, that’s also deeply horrifying. When Owen starts screaming that he’s dying, do people ignore him because they’re props of a nightmare realm, or do they ignore him because it’s such a socially abnormal thing to do that they have no idea how to respond? I do like a bit of ambiguity when, whichever way you read it, it works.
Is it fun? Not really—the atmosphere of the whole film is so oppressive and depressing, purposefully so. The musical numbers at the halfway point of the film are a pretty good time, though.
Is it queer? Literally the whole point is that it’s extremely queer, despite Owen’s terror and repression. Maddy openly states that she likes girls to make sure Owen’s not trying to hit on her; the intense connection between the characters of The Pink Opaque, Isabel and Tara, is extremely shippable, not to mention that the show is visually based at least in part on Buffy, which had a canonically lesbian character named Tara (whose death was an INFAMOUS case of Bury Your Gays bullshit; Tara and Isabel end up literally buried at the end of season five of The Pink Opaque). Owen is introduced wandering around under a pink, blue and white tent, the colours of the trans flag. It’s extremely, undeniably queer.
For your love is better than life, my lips will speak your praise. So I will bless you all my life, in your name I will lift up my hands. My soul shall be filled as with a banquet, my mouth shall praise you with joy.
From Psalm 63 and from Lauds for the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Week I of the Four-Week Psalter).
So it begins! For this week in Elephants, Ahoy Phase II, we have two prompts that clearly show you who had her prompt ready a week in advance, and who forgot her deadline was approaching. We have a week to come up with a little drabble/short story/whatever tidbit of storytelling that is inspired by our prompts!
My prompt to Jenn:
"My body is like a rum chocolate souffle; if I don't warm it up right, it doesn't rise."-- Kurt Hummel
Jenn's Prompt to me:
Inspire yourself with Jonathan Adler's quote "The relentless pursuit of tastefulness is a rather empty endeavor. There's an anonymity to it that I find distressing. Where's the fun? Where's the heart? Where's the joie de vivre?" and check out his website jonathanadler.com for a better idea of his style.
God our Father, hear our morning prayer and let the radiance of your love scatter the gloom of our hearts. The light of heaven's love has restored us to life: free us from the desires that belong to darkness.
The closing prayer for Lauds for Tuesday of the First Week in Ordinary Time (Week I of the Four-Week Psalter)
Some weeks drag on forever, some weeks fly by, but this week couldn't possibly get any worse for Cloud Strife. After days of intense training, irate instructors and frustrating other cadets; the last thing Strife needs is to be late out of bed and then to accidentally assault a First Class SOLDIER.
Can also be read [HERE] on ff.net.
[Week I]
Wednesday Evening
It wasn't hard to know who your superiors were here and it certainly wasn't hard to know who was in the trophy-cabinet at ShinRa. Cloud had been training for SOLDIER long enough to know the names of men he should respect the most, and he wanted nothing more than to avoid these ShinRa Icons at all costs.
The name that struck both fear and wonder in his heart so far was General Sephiroth. A man he had seen once, from a distance, and stared at enraptured. But his induction seminar was two months behind him now and none of the elite had, thankfully, crossed his path.
Being a nobody had its perks and, for the most part, Cloud liked it that way.
Even if...Cloud was still the runt that others found amusing at his expense. Why had he thought it would be different? Well, because he didn't have a past in ShinRa. It was supposed to be a new beginning where he had harmed no one and could prove that he was something. He didn't know what, but he wanted to be worth something that others would look upon with a glimpse of approval. That's what he wanted. Cloud wanted to go back to Nibelheim...as a SOLDIER.
The sound of the door opening made him jump a little, snapping his head in its direction.
"Bwaha! I have found you!" cried his roommate, Soshi. "Aren't you going to eat?"
Grumbling something about having nabbed food on his return to the room, Cloud relaxed back into the bed, returning his gaze to the ceiling.
"Still hurting from the run?" Soshi asked with a rueful grin, hopping onto the bed opposite Cloud's.
"All twenty miles of it," was his even reply, flashing Soshi a smile.
Cloud was grateful to have Soshi. He was the only person Cloud truly thought of as a friend and, even though Soshi was taller and probably stronger, he regarded Cloud as just 'another one of the guys'. He didn't understand why Cloud got so much hassle. His deducted solution was; if Cloud talked to people more often, then they would probably see him as more of an equal. Soshi didn't understand that Cloud preferred his own company.
"You know what you need?" said Soshi.
"Enlighten me," he responded flatly.
"A hot shower, it'll help sooth your muscles," Soshi explained before reaching beneath his bed to retrieve black boot polish, his messy brown hair falling into his eyes.
Shifting like a limbless cat, trying to avoid pain shooting through his legs, Cloud grunted and closed his eyes. A shower sounded good but the thought of moving seemed fatal. He heard his roommate remark upon some new deep gouges cut into his boots, but paid no attention as sleep ensnared his heavy mind.
With reluctance, Cloud slowly blinked his eyes open. How long had he been asleep? The room was still dark...and suspiciously quiet. "Soshi?" Cloud mumbled. Pushing up as best he could and leaning on his left forearm, Cloud swung his head close to the bedside table and squinted at the glowing red digits of his clock until the haze became readable.
"SHIT!" he bellowed, eyes springing open and body lurching out of bed. Shiva he felt weak. It was 6AM. and Cloud was supposed to be in his basic-training class at six! His asshole of a training instructor was going to make him pay for such tardiness.
Changing as fast as he could physically manage he charged out the room, cursing Soshi with a vengeance for not waking him up. His muscles were burning from the day before, but Cloud did not break his sprint. What would his instructor do? He could already foresee his sergeant yelling, degrading him with some comment and then setting him a large amount of press-ups. The number 'one-hundred' loomed in his mind's-eye. Will I ever get a break? he thought desperately, before smacking into someone and flying back to the ground.
"Hey, no running in the halls, kid!" spoke a good-humoured voice.
Groaning and touching his forehead, Cloud forced himself to look up. His jaw fell slack.
"What's your hurry?" asked the man he'd crashed into, his hand extended down to Cloud. Long black hair fell into his eyes; everything about him unmistakable.
"I – I was...am, late for class," Cloud admitted, accepting the offered hand. His face burned with embarrassment.
"That's no reason to hurt yourself - or others," the SOLDIER chuckled, his gaze never leaving Cloud's face. "I'm Zack," he said with a decisive nod, perhaps thinking it would ease Cloud's tension. No luck. Cloud couldn't unclench his fists or shift his feet apart - he felt stuck, pinned to attention.
"Yeah, I know." A blush started to attack his cheeks. A better response might have been, 'I'm Cadet Strife, sir', but a whirlwind of curses was flooding Cloud's head. All he could think of was how he had just charged into a First Class SOLDIER, the soldier who trained directly under Commander Angeal Hewley.
"Oh, well good." Zack's grin widened. "And you are?"
A bucket of icy water seemed to have been poured over Cloud's body. Was Zack going to report him?
"Nameless?" Zack teased, tilting his head when he got no response.
Cloud hurriedly shook his head. "I - no. Sorry. I'm Strife, sir, Cadet Strife."
Zack laughed, but there was something that sounded fond about it. "Ah-dear. No first name? So we're semi-nameless."
"I -" Cloud snapped his head up and almost wished he hadn't tried to meet Zack's eyes, but it felt rude to look away again. Trying hard to stand at attention and return the confident stare, he replied, "Cloud, sir. My name is Cloud."
"Cloud," Zack nodded. "It's nice to meet you, even if you did almost run me down!"
"Sorry, sir." Relieved to look away from Zack's obscenely blue eyes, Cloud stared at the man's chest instead, studying the black woollen pattern of his tank-top with determined concentration. The back of his eyes began to burn and he tightened his lips together – wishing the floor would swallow him alive.
"Very apologetic, aren't you?" Zack mused.
Cloud tried to smile but half grimaced instead – attempted to look up at his superior and then changed his mind. Cloud could see his name sinking deeper into the 'black-list'. He'd barely even started the training programme and already he felt like he wouldn't make it halfway through with all the scorn he got and mistakes he made. And Zack freakin' Fair? Cloud held his breath and widened his eyes.
"Hmm..." Leaning back to look at Cloud better, Zack crossed his arms.
"Yes sir?" Perhaps, as a Cadet, Cloud could get away with grovelling. What could he offer? To polish Zack's boots every day? To give up his free weekend afternoon's and - and what? Finish Zack's paperwork while he went off to a bar? Cloud could do that. He had decent writing skills.
"Who's your instructor this morning?"
"Sergeant Takihiro." He began to feel heavier. Zack was taking a mental note of him should Cloud ever screw up again.
"Come with me, Strife."
"I – yessir."
As soon as Zack turned his back, Cloud cringed. It took a lot of strength to straighten up but he still couldn't stop frowning. How did he go about asking for favours, or pardons? He sighed. The on-coming press-ups Cloud could handle. The humiliation he could mostly handle, too. The look on one particular student's face, however, he couldn't bear to think about. There always had to be one peer who just loved to watch others burn.
As they headed down the turquoise-themed corridors, Zack turned to look at Cloud. He was surprised to see Zack grinning. With a sweep of his hand, Zack urged for Cloud to walk beside him.
"So, how are you finding your classes, Cloud?"
"All right I suppose," he mumbled softly.
"Not a favourite class?"
"Mmm...maybe materia studies."
"Oh, I loved that one too! The combinations you can make are just real neat, especially elemental materia – but you probably haven't started that yet. You're probably still on healing techniques and the importance of their condition, right?"
"Yeah," was all Cloud could say. They had actually started on shields. He side-glanced warily at Zack.
"My favourite was physical practise though. Getting to grips with combat, the fun stuff, you know? How to wield a cool looking sword around and not get your ass kicked at the same time! Do you like combat training?"
A dark frown took over Cloud's face again. "Not so much." He stared at the floor like he was hoping the clinical colour would turn into acid. He thought of the student in combat training who loved to aggravate Cloud, almost like it was a national sport.
"Hmmm..." Zack mused once more. Cloud chose to act like he hadn't heard this time.
The glass doors that labelled the end on this zone hissed open for the two of them, and Cloud followed the First Class SOLDIER in the direction of his combat class. Why was Zack personally delivering him to class? To make sure he got the right punishment? To tell Takihiro he wanted Cloud under a stricter thumb? To make sure Cloud went to the class at all?
They came to an optional turn in the corridor: carry straight on, or turn right.
"Stay here a moment," said Zack, and he jogged down the right corridor, knocked briefly on a door (hardly waiting for a reply) and disappeared inside the academic-classroom. A few minutes later he strode out with a piece paper in hand. "Here," he grinned, holding out the sheet for Cloud.
Cloud looked at it dubiously. What kind of a report card was this? He raised his hand to take it. "Umm...what is it, sir?"
"Just a greeting from First Class Zack. But I'd head straight to class now, you're late enough as it is."
Cloud glanced at the handwriting scrawled across the paper, baffled, not actually reading it, and then returned his confused eyes to Zack. His superior's smile softened. "Try smile, kid. I know it's tough here, but I reckon smiling suits you."
Cloud's hands intensified their grip on the piece of paper.
With a brief tap on Cloud's upper arm, Zack finished, "See you around, Strife," and saluted with two fingers as he turned and strode back the way they had come. Cloud watched him go, a slight smile twitching at the corners of his mouth.
Before Zack was out of sight, Cloud began skimming through what he'd written.
'Hello Sergeant Takihiro! Listen, just want to apologise for Cloud being late. I nabbed the kid on my way to see Hojo. I had way too many boxes to carry and seeing as we ran into each other - files soaring everywhere – I asked him to help me out. He seemed pretty adamant he shouldn't be late for class, so I promised I'd write him a note. Sorry he's late for your class. My fault completely. Zack Fair /signature/'
Cloud heard the doors open and close before he had the chance to catch a final glimpse of him. He wanted to run after and say 'thanks', but ran the other way instead; ready to give Takihiro a smug little grin. Everyone knew what Takihiro was like...
