Los Angeles: a morass of moral ambiguity

My world is full of noises outside of me and my rhythm.  Living in a city requires some sort of religion: an acceptance that some things are outside of your control, but it’s worth it to live in this mecca of culture and ideas.  When your upstairs neighbor is rolling a chair above your head at midnight, or clomping about her apartment in what surely must be 3 inch platform heels, once recites the mantra: “I can walk to the ocean, I can walk to the ocean, I can walk to the ocean,” and self-pity melts into gratitude or at least self-congratulation.  Why do we introverts bother living in the city in the first place?  So we can enjoy the solitude of our tiny book-filled apartments, a solitude made more blissful by the knowledge that we could be at the smoky bar our colleagues tried to drag us to, in an effort to make us more social.  Why indeed, when I know that the only place I’ve ever felt anything even close to “god” was high in the mountains in Colorado, in a completely deserted meadow rimmed with majestically tall trees, and then again encircled by row after row of ever more distant peaks.  But as Jane Austen’s Mary Bennett utters in one of her many moments of pedantic  tedium “society has claims on us all.” 

While she was referring to some dreadfully dreary duty to society to participate, she also unwittingly betrayed her longing for acceptance and approval by said society, a feeling I understand completely.  So while one half of me would probably enjoy a quiet life as a hermit in some remote mountain cabin, the other half longs for interaction and affirmation.  I have always wanted the approval and admiration of my peers, this is no secret I attempt to keep from myself.  It is this desire that binds me to Los Angeles, a city as equally deserving of the nickname the City of  Flowers and Sunshine, as the City of Broken Dreams.  While I know, or rather suspect, that true happiness and peace will come from seeking acceptance and love within myself and sending it outwards, rather than attempting to bring it inwards, I do want to accomplish good, and I do not want to lose my ambition and drive in satisfaction and complacency.  So how to balance this?  Vanity, pride, and a hunger for admiration are such strong motivators, and I think have pushed many people to accomplish great things, of course in conjunction with genuine a love and passion for what they are doing.  Now that I have cloaked my vanity in a noble cause, on to accomplishing said cause without compromising it on the way.  Aye, therein lies the rub...

SXSW Review: Monsieur Lazhar

I have been delinquent in my SXSW reviews but I have to excuse myself by begging Waiting for Lightning whirlwind.  We just finished the DC LA Screening at the Arclight Cinerama Dome this week and it was fantastic.  Now I'm ready to go back and write some reviews about the films I saw in Austin.

I want to start with Philippe Falardeau's Monsieur Lazhar because I think I enjoyed it the most.  A French Canadian film, it felt very French to me in several ways.  First of all, the film seemed to be content to exist in the moment presented, without trying to explain too much of the past (some was necessary) or resolve too much of the future.  It just existed.  I was reading an article on Camus and Sartre the other day and I realized how much this simple approach to storytelling, almost a matter of fact fatalism which is simultaneously oddly optimistic, which I have recognized in so many French films, is in fact the cultural inheritance of the existentialists, whose philosophy pervaded modern French culture in the 1940's and 50's seeping into it's very core.  It was this that I enjoyed about the film, the simple sweetness of the story of a substitute teacher trying to bring a sense of normalcy and eventually happiness to class of middle school students mourning their much beloved teacher.

Monsieur Lazhar (Mohamed Fellag) is a good man, trying to make the situation better for the children in the class and trying to find employment and distraction for himself in his adoptive country as he seeks political asylum, fearing to return to his native Algeria.  Fellag does an excellent job in this role and we completely sympathize with Monsieur Lazhar as a man trying to make a new life while he struggles with a different culture and the shadows of his past.

Monsieur Lazhar's teaching methods are fairly old-fashioned, which causes conflict in this upper middle class, modern Canadian middle school.  As he attempts to connect to the children, he does succeed in reaching Alice (Sophie Nélisse), a direct and perceptive young girl, angered and troubled by their teacher's suicide.  Nélisse is excellent as Alice.  Her pensive, saucer-like eyes and Falardeau's use of simple framing suck you into the character's mind and feelings effortlessly.  Falardeau has done an excellent job of creating a natural, simple, and beautiful story of love, loss, forgiveness, and acceptance.

Prints for Sale on Etsy

I have finally opened my Etsy Shop, Paper Crane Prints, and stocked it with 8x10 prints of some of my work. I have been waiting for some of the craziness of Waiting for Lightning to die down to launch it.  Today, I decided it was an auspicious Tuesday and I might as well do it.  Below is the selection that is for sale at the moment.  If you have requests for photos see elsewhere on the blog, as long as it's tagged "Photos" that means it is my own work and I can do custom prints.  Just send me a message either on Etsy or on the blog.