FILM: All is Lost, starring Robert Redford

…and only Robert Redford. A survival genre film, it captivated me.  Will he survive?  The irony is warm yet pitiless.  What did Our Man (RR's character, no problem with concluding this the film's existential allegorical intention) do wrong?  Why doesn't his note say he loves someone?  Major Tom did.

Why doesn't he have an emergency beacon on the boat?  Why did the bros in Deliverance canoe down a river without reconnoitering it first? Why doesn't he get out the emergency radio in the lifeboat and try to use it sooner? Why doesn't he know how to make a condenser to get fresh water?  Maybe he forgot, like older people do. 

He tells us, "he tried". An epitaph that may be all we really deserve at the end of our life, truth told baldly.  

Redford is solo sailing in the Indian Ocean when his boat collides in the night with an errant cargo bin full of tennis shoes.  He is old and moves somewhat stiffly but he patches the hole and that's about the last thing that goes his way.

What's most moving to me is that he is able to plot his position on his nautical maps,using the sextant he teaches himself to use from a book, but so what?  He knows where he is, but no one else does and knowing thyself provides no assistance but the ability to choose; the hard truth asserted.

The film's question:  when would I choose to give up and die? Would I be unable to choose, tumbled by waves and fate? Drowning is a terrible death, struggling not to breathe but finally inhaling, body panic struggling with mental directions - don't breathe yet, hold it, keep pushing for the surface... 

He takes a huge risk at film's end, (no spoiler) that's breathtaking and concludes the film with ambiguity. Is he saved? Are you saved? Why or why not? 

I sailed with my husband on a Cal 20 when I was a young woman, battling nausea, wet, cold, damp, and boredom. He loved it so. I'm just home from a gentle dive trip on a fake pirate ship in placid warm Indonesian waters, none of those problems! I loved it so.

I would think that if one had never been to sea, the film offers the poetic reality  almost perfectly.  I was chilled and stunned by the visual beauty of the film.  The musical score was exquisite and haunting, like a far-away sea bird weaving through the clouds.


Is Redford doing an extended method actor's exercise as his craggy face, icy blue eyes, and aging body reveal the range of emotions Our Man experiences? Can't say.  

This spare, unusual film is compelling and fascinating, I am fortunate to see it.

   
      

FILM: "The Wind Rises", Kazuo Miyazaki's final film

To be in love with flying today must be an unusual experience.  Aviation history has mostly happened; for the last two generations its been spaceships. So the great story of the fulfillment of centuries of dreamers yearning for wings has sat on the shelf for a time. How to summon this richness back? 

My love of flying began at age 10, when a  neighbor took me on a small plane for a trip over my little hometown.  And my early love of movies from attending Saturday matinees for children offered for 10 cents. One gray December day I saw The Spirit of St. Louis.  I remember coming out of the theater to the first snowfall, the softened and whitened world transformed, that possibility fixed for me by snow and Lindberg's great accomplishment.  

I wanted out of what I had, though, that unique Midwestern combination of childhood innocence and rigid oversight.  A flight attendant's job was one of those teen adventure dreams, and a possible pathway to that great world I so wanted to know. 

I loved aviation history; TWA and Pan Am, the SST, the Boeing 747, global route maps expanding.  I read Night Flight and Sand Wind and Stars by Saint-Exupèry and wore Vol de Nuit perfume.

And I loved aviation movies: Top Gun, The English Patient come to mind. World War II movies. From childhood, The Little Prince captures life's poignancy and flight's poetry. Only Angels Have Wings from film class, the best movie about the romantic and dangerous life of early airmail pilots.     

It was easy for me to love The Wind Rises,  the story of an idealistic young aeronautical engineer, who designed the prototype for the Zero which was used to bomb Pearl Harbor. 

Jiro Horikushu and as he is drawn by Miyazaki

I'm entranced by all of Myazaki's films; they have a gentle narrative revelation and unique animated beauty that make wanna-be's of the best Disney moments - Bambi and Snow White in the woods, come to mind, and Disney's straightforward storytelling.

The story though, is adult and rich with its ambiguity.  The great dream of flight, once achieved, leads to undreamed-of destruction, the Japanese defeated in a war conceived in madness. 

Miyazaki shows us this in fluidly edited sequences contrasting scenes of grandly soaring fighter squadrons followed by Horikoshi, the airplane designer, walking through a field of broken airplane parts, grass softening and overtaking like snow.

Miyazaki's hand-drawn animation uses thin black outlines to depict his characters and most of the objects of the material world, and activates them against expansive lush natural settings, drawn by Kazuo Oga.

Upwelling clouds reminiscent of N.C. Wyeth, trains puffing through landscapes yet unmarred by modern industry, all drawn with defined edges but no black outlines, making a profound visual statement about the relation of the art object and its existence in an unbounded earthly setting.

Nahoko's sanitarium 

An earthquake, Japan's 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, is a fine visual sequence, foreshadowing  terrible future events. 

In another sequence Hiro meets Nahoko again at a vacation hotel. Another guest, described as Sherlock Holmes,a large-nosed, avuncular matchmaker, plays the piano while the group sings in German together and toasts the betrothal.  

One inference is that fellowship and good will live in every language and culture, a hard lesson to be wrought from war's savagery.  Nonetheless, the lesson is particularly bitter delivered by a Jewish-appearing character singing a German drinking song.

A stylized device from western cinema is used when characters need to distance themselves emotionally: they sit and smoke. It's odd and dated, unromantic now when it used to signify such sophistication, patience, connection, individuation.

The film's love story is tear-jerker poignant: the lovers will be parted by Nahoko's early death from tuberculosis, an illness which appears in Myazaki's My Neighbor Totoro as well. TB is the classic romantic illness, offing many a filmic and operatic heroine, as well as Miyazaki's own mother. But Hiro and Nahoko make choices and live with the consequences, knowing that both the wind and the tide rise, and "...we must attempt to live."

It's a warmer judgment on a life look-back meditation than Chairman Mao's last song from Nixon in China, "...how much of what we did was good?...outside this room the chill of grace lies heavy on the morning grass."

What a fine opera this film would make. A few years younger than he, I will live with Miyazaki's farewell perspective as I spend these last years well.

BOOKS: The Bleeding Edge, by Thomas Pynchon

Requirements for understanding this novel:  1) be a cybercrime techie 2) live in Manhattan 3) be skilled in Noel Coward-like repartee 4) I keep up with pop culture and cool bands  5) for some obscure ironic reason, be completely oblivious to 9-11

Otherwise, you can laugh at some of the funny little “bits” provided in between the  sequences of descent into the virtual underworld, entered by backdoors, secret passwords, hacking, and stolen software.  There are also interludes with gangsters, children strung together with a narrative about a sexy housewife detective pursuing a money-laundering criminal. 

I read it because it was Pynchon and I leave it to cooler heads than mine to decide if this novel has any merit.  Me, I am dazed and confused, but now I know it.  I think I’ll just go fishing.

TRAVEL: Raja, The Last Day, then home (Oct 31 & Nov 1)

KRI ISLAND

photo from resort ad

Kri Island is comparatively close to Sarong, and here we saw other divers - the only place in Raja we did.  
Cape Kri had a current intersection in relatively deep water, and there we saw schools of barracuda, black-tip reef sharks, and other larger fish.  A wide open area,filled with fish traffic, and very impressive.  

Then we swam to the upper end of Kri and snorkeled the length of the island, then another snorkel around the back side. Again, the most plentiful fish ever.  They also were slower - not as skittish.  Ron said they weren't afraid of divers because it's a marine sanctuary and they haven't been hunted.  They know.  

In the morning we set off to the site of a future "home stay" - small eco-resorts built by village groups and advertised on-line.  This tiny island had nests of the peculiar Megapode.  The bird is like a chicken, with large feet. It builds a tall, rounded

mound in which it lays its egg.  The organic material within decays and the warmth hatches the egg.  The baby claws its way out, ready to go - born very developed and mature. Wallace writes about seeing it, fascinated with its ingenuity. The nest was right in the center of the compound, probably never to be used again. 

Ron had some ideas about returning to the location to preserve the nesting area and make it a feature of the eco-resort.  

While we were on the island, it rained, and we were offered shelter in one of the lodges being built.  It was warm and beautiful, with mats and quilts for sleeping, made of rattan and woven leaves.

One of the women noticed us picking up shells and brought us some lovely ones to add to our collection. That's MaryAnn with me and the cute little shy children. Then back into the water.

This video is a titan triggerfish fanning her newly laid eggs to oxygenate them.

unicorn triggerfish - about 18"

What a beautiful fish this is - with its deep blue-violet background and the saffron tail and collar, it's stunning.

trunkfish - spotted?

Meyer's Butterfly fish - a wonderfully distinctive fish

saddled butterflyfish

Regal Angelfish - rather large, like a dinner plate

Moorish Idol - this symbol of the reef, not seen by me elsewhere, ubiquitous here in Raja Ampat

masked angelfish

foxface rabbitfish

very large  titan triggerfish

 

parrotfish - the most extra-ordinary manganese blue of my dreams

trumpetfish

RL* Grouper - now this is beautiful - I wish fish colorings were fabrics I could wear

RL*

RL* Spadefish - we saw many of these platter-like fish in schools - they are somewhat curious, following us about

RL*

RL* scrawled filefish or map filefish boxfishs?  Love this design

RL* school of  chevron barracuda?

This charming watermelon was carved with the World Wildlife Fun logo and its  panda bear icon for our farewell dinner party.

our wonderful multi-talented crew - took such good care of us.

Each time we came in from the boat, they would line up and give us a way-to-go handslap, in the style of athletes returning to the dugout after hitting a home run. Very charming.  

John Lewis, ChristineMcKay , Judy Weis, MaryAnn Lewis, Jo deWeese, Christine Ruttle, me, Mark Ruttle, Gus Lewis, Pete Weis, Marilyn Downing, Ron Leidich, Dalton Amboy 

Indo-Pacific Bottlenose Dolphins RL*

The tropical sunset retains its singular purity, remains a great reward to day's end, journey's end.