The Blog of Jason "Jayce" Olshefsky

I headed out to The Little (240 East Ave.) to check out a couple movies. On Mondays, they have been running a $5/movie promotion, and since the George Eastman House (900 East Ave.) is closed, there is no film at the Dryden. Too often I let the Little’s schedule slip through my fingers and I miss out on things I wanted to see.

I was tempted to see Jiro Dreams of Sushi as I heard good things about it (and I missed it at the Dryden last month.) But, since I was running a little late, I opted instead to see Jeff, Who Lives at Home and then Bully.

I remembered that Dayna Papaleo gave “Jeff” a lukewarm-positive review in the City Paper so I gave it a shot with relatively low expectations. I found it a bit rough around the edges. As I told a friend later, it tends to really shove hard on suspension of disbelief which did not quite break me out of the movie: my advice is to stick with it and let it flow because there’s a multi-layered story going on that’s worth examining. I’ll also warn that I found Ed Helms acting to be a bit too broad … at least at first: I often suspect that shooting schedules for movies tend to be set up by location, but also loosely in script-order, so his earlier scenes in the film seem like a caricature portrait, but he does improve as the film goes on.

At the surface, the film is about an easily-dismissed stoner, Jeff (Jason Segel) who believes that the underlying nature of the universe is revealed through subtle messages that he believes he is tuning himself to see. Meanwhile, his brother Pat (Ed Helms) leads a much more conventional life, suppressing any belief in a purposeful world by focusing on the minutia of day-to-day life. Jeff lives in their mother Sharon’s (Susan Sarandon) basement — who is struggling to find meaning in her own life as a widow, unsatisfied with her sons. Oh, and it’s designed as a comedy with a lot of really quite funny moments.

But take away the mechanicals of the plot (“a stoner goes on a wacky adventure struggling to complete a simple task”) and what’s left is a painting of the way family is inexorably connected; how they are similar in deep, subtle ways that transcend their outwardly tremendous differences. Without giving away too much, I found it unexpectedly tender when Jeff is sitting the basement watching TV listlessly eating an uncooked PopTart.

With just a short break, I stuck around to see Bully. In case you didn’t know, it’s a documentary about bullying in primary schools in the United States … sort-of. Its candid portrayal of day-to-day school life resonated with me, and made me wonder if I’m repressing some memories of being bullied — I vividly remember moments that echoed Alex’s dialog with his mother and with school administrators. I suspect that some part will resonate with everyone.

By my interpretation, in American society, it is considered normal for kids to establish their individuality by saying cruel things to one another. Most form a callous that protects and strengthens from each cruel remark. But some do not, and the cruelty strikes their heart each time. And because it hurts so very much, it’s not something they wish to inflict on others, so they never become adept at cruelty. And then their unwillingness to be cruel becomes itself another difference that is attacked, and the pain just builds and builds.

The movie paints the picture of this seemingly unavoidable torture and then finds hope in things that parents and children are doing to turn the tide. But in my gut, I knew the speeches, the discussions, and the rallies would handily be derided by any half-clever fourth-grader — and much to the amusement of jeir peers, continuing to feed the cycle.

In one scene, Alex is talking with his assistant principal, he doesn’t believe her actions will help. He cites a previous case where he was bullied by getting stuffed into the seat cushions of the bus and her actions failed to stop the bullying. She has the audacity to bully him to reinforce her belief in the petty authority she holds: she begs the question by asking if that specific circumstance ever happened again, knowing that she’ll be able to steamroll poor Alex who doesn’t have the skills to call her on her bullshit.

That, and the principal of the same school’s reprehensible reaction to Alex’s poor parents led me to think of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. A common criticism of the film is that Ferris is an anti-hero because he fails to respect the authority of Principal Ed Rooney who is played to be a petty dictator — and an incompetent one at that. But watching Bully, I can’t help but believe Rooney’s portrayal may be less of an exaggeration than it seems. As an adult, thinking of the advice given by my own guidance counselors, teachers, principals, and any other “school authority” seems, at best, to be the good-and-bad mix of advice you can get from anybody over the age of 21, and downright buffoonish at worst.

But when I said the film is about bullying “sort of”, I meant that there’s an undercurrent of hope from people doing things they never thought possible. And in a way, the bullying and attempts to stop bullying seem trite compared to the profound personal changes in the lives of people confronting adversity.

I was talking with a friend the other week and we were commenting on how the lilacs seem more fragrant this year, probably because of the stresses of the weather. She commented that stress makes things beautiful. I thought it wasn’t quite right — I’ve seen people who are stressed and they’re not pretty — so I said it’s adapting to stress that is beautiful.

I headed out to the Dryden Theater at George Eastman House (900 East Ave.) to see Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. I had been joking that I was going to see a blaxploitation film with a bunch of white people under the guise of watching for “educational purposes”. In at least one way I was incorrect: Sweetback is not a “blaxploitation film” unto itself. It’s more of a pressure release on a tense period of strong, established racism on all levels: individual, institutional, and systemic. It follows a black male prostitute running from a racist police force out to get him.

The film has its own cinematic style that draws from counterculture examples of the late 1960′s and early 1970′s. Vanishing Point, released the same year, comes immediately to mind as well as Zabriskie Point, released the year prior. Sweetback isn’t just some simple story to write off, but a pointed [despite lacking "point" in its name] and poignant condemnation of the flagrant racial stereotyping permeating the entirety of commercial cinema. It transcends its story and calls attention to the power that mass media holds, and how that power — when exploited in response to fear (e.g. fear of a powerful black man) — can fuel hatred and abuse.

But the amusing anecdote in the whole thing was, just as Sweetback himself was becoming a man, the fire alarm sounded in the theater and we had to be evacuated.

Too hot for the Dryden

Even 40 years later, the system still fears a black man.

I got a chance to see Un condamné à mort s’est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut (A Man Escaped) at the Dryden Theater at George Eastman House (900 East Ave.). Apparently, the director Robert Bresson‘s works are frequently characterized as cold and emotionless yet — despite the nature of the plot necessitating the characters to display little emotion — the film was warm, hopeful, and very moving.

The plot follows a man who is struggling to survive a Nazi prison during WWII with his humanity and WILL intact. As the title flaunts, the central action concerns his methodical plan to escape. And despite its past-tense reveal, the tension is palpable and relentless.

I cannot stop being mildly amused that I headed out on the Tuesday after Christmas to see Marti, dupa craciun (Tuesday, After Christmas) at the Dryden Theater at George Eastman House (900 East Ave.) — clearly a little film programming joke from Lori Donnelly.

In the film, Paul is married to Adriana and together they have a child, but Paul is also involved in a long-term relationship with the girl’s dentist, Raluca. There is no doubt how the story will play out: the relationship with Raluca will replace Paul’s relationship with Adriana, and the film takes careful, deliberate steps to let us watch this unfold. As the Eastman House calendar so eloquently put it, the film captures “its trio of lived-in performances with graceful, uninterrupted long takes and a knowing sense of the human comedy.”

As I watched with from my odd personal vantage point, I couldn’t help but think, “it’s such a shame they want it to go so badly — they really believe that anything but unwavering, complete monogamy is a fatal, destructive flaw.”

Instead, what if the central couple understood that all of one’s needs — intellectual, emotional, sexual, support, etc. — simply cannot be met adequately by one other person forever. Keep the core of devotion, but allow for needs and desires to be negotiated. If Adriana knew that Paul was sexually and emotionally in need, and she did not want to (or could not) fulfill those needs herself, why not let Paul fulfill them elsewhere? I’m sure likewise that Paul did not meet every one of Adriana’s needs, so she too could be free to find fulfillment some other way. Why let it build from a mild hunger to desperate starvation when a tiny morsel at the outset would do just as well?

What we call a “normal healthy relationship” sure is weird to me.

I missed out on Martha Marcy May Marlene when it screened at The Little (240 East Ave.) a few weeks back, but I got a chance to see it at The Cinema Theatre (957 South Clinton Ave.) as part of a double-feature with Margin Call.

I’ll start with Margin Call and say just a little: it’s the story of the 2008 financial meltdown convincingly told with a sympathetic eye to the people closest to the problem. It really only served to reinforce my opinion that the stock market is nothing more than gambling with no relevance to any real value in the world. It was good, solid entertainment.

Martha Marcy May Marlene plays out largely in flashback: the tale of a woman indoctrinated into a rural cult. I think most people watch the film as a sort of horror/thriller, exposing the layers of lies, power, and brainwashing that get an otherwise reasonable person to embrace completely absurd notions. But I guess I come from a weird perspective, and saw it as a tale that compares two cults: one at a rural farm, and the other, American industrialized society. When Martha (a.k.a. Marcy May as named by the cult leaders, or Marlene when any of the women answered the phone) is reacquainted with her sister Lucy, she returns to Lucy and her husband Ted’s summer home (none of who utters reference to a “cult” as none either knows or believes it). She first showers and when she rejoins Lucy on a bed, Lucy says, “oh, you’re dripping”, referring to Martha’s wet hair. Particularly given the more important things going on, why is this even remotely important?: it is the Lucy/Ted/American culture’s set of arbitrary and irrelevant rules.

Like Kynodontas (Dogtooth) (which I saw at the Dryden), the film acts as a mirror to our own society. My culture’s foundation is violence: if I don’t do what I’m supposed to do, society responds with force (which may sound familiar, taken from Derrick Jensen‘s philosophy). For instance, if I decide that the house I have been living in (exclusively, for the last 12 years, and no other person has come by to claim it is theirs) is mine and I decide to no longer pay my mortgage, eventually someone will come with a gun and tell me I have to leave. That is the incentive for paying my mortgage. Of course, it’s conditioned from an early age, so it doesn’t seem like that’s the reason, but it ultimately is.

I of course know the differences between my culture and the cult, but the lines were pretty severely blurred by the end of the film. It’s kind of a “choose your own poison” kind of tale. Martha is a pawn in the game where she’s either enslaved to pay for her existence, or, well, enslaved to pay for her existence. There’s happiness and misery to be found in both places only at different times and in different forms. But ultimately she’s asking the right questions: why do I have to?

I was very impressed with Le quattro volte (The Four Times) when I got a chance to see it at the Dryden Theater at George Eastman House (900 East Ave.) It feels like a documentary but is actually a story as seen from the perspective of God, or the natural world, or the land rather than from an omniscient observer tending to a particular character or traditional story arc. It reminded me a bit of Bu san (Good Bye Dragon Inn) with its unusual narrator (in that case, the aging theater itself).

The film starts by following an old goat herder through his simple life. Like I say, it looks like a documentary, although I noticed a few little cinematic-style errors creep in, and (through the introduction) I already knew it was a narrative.

But you know, this isn’t really the way to talk about the film. The mechanics of how it works aren’t of much importance. It’s a film about feeling, and about the broad strokes of reality. It’d be like trying to describe clouds by talking about evaporation.

It’s got a refreshing way of using motion picture like a moving photograph. It’s a snapshot of things as they are, and the nature of how “the way things are” is nonsensical since things are always changing. Life is change, death is change. And through this (pardon the apparently unavoidable cinematic metaphors) moving image — this lens into a world of our own from a vantage point seldom seen — we get hope, sadness, contemplation, and mirth all bundled untidily as life does.

I was feeling a bit depressed but I wanted to see Il deserto rosso (Red Desert) anyway so I walked out to George Eastman House (900 East Ave.)

The movie was extremely impressive. From the introduction, I gathered it was not intended so much as a condemnation of industrialized society, but rather a portrait of its beauty. It does so, however, by showing industrialization as boldly and plainly as possible. The protagonist — the wife of a high-level manager at a chemical plant — is set against this landscape as a way to demonstrate it. Her world is shifting beneath her, but the hard gray of industrialization stands sturdily.

I think most people naturally gravitate to her plight, and as such, see it as a rather bleak movie. Given my mood at the outset, I was ready to let it all wash over me in that way. But I also understand that the industrialized facets were just as central — and if you can believe that the man-made structures are the protagonist, the whole thing seems pretty uplifting.

When I left, I decided to just walk straight home. I was still in a funk, but was also affected by the film. I kept looking at the world in odd ways — looking at things that I would ordinarily ignore.

My mood got particularly bleak when I (walking home alone once again … as usual) decided that this was all there was; that my best years were behind me and solitude and ever-weighing loneliness was all I had to look forward to. From here on out, there would be no surprises and I’d just trudge through day-by-day, step-by-step.

All of a sudden, a cat raced past me, startling me. It ran ahead of me and plopped on the ground begging to be petted. I declined its advances, but it reminded me things aren’t always the same.

I went to the Dryden Theater at George Eastman House (900 East Ave.) to see Made in Dagenham at 8. Before the film, it was announced that people in Washington Square Park (Woodbury Blvd at South Clinton Ave, across from Geva Theatre) protesting as Occupy Rochester would be arrested: Mayor Thomas S. Richards had ordered them out at 10 p.m. Although that news distracted me through the first part of the film, it was nonetheless enjoyable. It reenacts the events surrounding a strike of female auto workers at a British Ford factory in 1968 — their pay was cut when they were reclassified from “semi-skilled” to “unskilled”. I gathered the historical accuracy was not perfect but reasonably good, and although the film concludes stating better labor relations, the Dagenham plant closed after the film was made and moved its operations elsewhere.

Although I’d rather have gone to celebrate for Halloween, I headed to Washington Square Park just about 10 p.m. At that point, no police were around — hauntingly, I saw no police on my way there either, and it was the Friday before Halloween Weekend on the busy East End area (in which one would ordinarily observe 2 or 3 parked cruisers). The members of Occupy Rochester were discussing their plan for the evening. They did this with a technique I saw at an anarchy class: whenever anyone wanted to speak, they were added to a “stack” by a moderator, and then allowed in turn to speak to the group. They used a “living microphone” of sorts where when one person spoke, they’d do it in 4-7 word pieces which were then loudly repeated by the group so everyone could hear.

A posting on the statue announced that the park was to be vacated by 10 p.m. The police had notified the group earlier that they would arrive at 11 p.m. The group appointed two laissons to approach the police when they arrived. The laissons were to explain the purpose of the protest, state that it was indeed a protest and a peaceful assembly protected by the Bill of Rights, and to ask that the arresting officers contact their superiors and request that the arrests be cancelled. The crowd was to remain respectfully quiet for the laissons to speak with police. Discussion in the group then revolved around getting arrested, having bail money, pairing up, and finding a small group of people who would remain at the jail until everyone goes home.

Camera crews from TWEAN (Time Warner Entertainment-Advance/Newhouse Partnership) News Channel of Rochester L.L.C d.b.a. YNN and Newport Television LLC, 13WHAM (formerly WOKR ABC) were on hand. The police arrived at 11:15 p.m. and set up a pick-up truck with what appeared to be a Long-Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) along with about 15 cruisers and a few vans. They announced to the crowd that the park was closed from 11 p.m. (maybe it was 10 p.m. … I don’t remember off hand) to 5 a.m. (per city ordinance which they identified), anyone remaining in the park would be arrested if they did not leave in 15 minutes, and all remaining personal belongings in the park would be confiscated. (It reminded me of reenactments of witchcraft trials where the accusers attempted to claim the side of right and good with formal language that failed to address the whole situation.) Some people moved to the sidewalk around the park, leaving a crowd of 40 or so in the park proper and another 50 more on the sidewalk. I opted to observe from the other side of South Clinton. There were about 40 uniformed officers including Police Chief James M. Sheppard and a few other high-ranking officers. Police cruisers had blocked South Clinton at 490 and Byron St. as well as Woodbury from South Clinton to South Avenue.

My friend and City Council candidate Alex White was there. I talked with him a bit and he was checking in with the police and observing to ensure things went smoothly and peacefully. He noted that the police were concerned as they were outnumbered and did not want things to turn violent.

At around 10:35 the police announced they would begin making arrests. Police Chief James M. Sheppard personally attended to the first half-dozen arrests. I don’t know if the laissons from Occupy Rochester stated their case, but the crowd was quiet, and they were the first two to be arrested. During subsequent arrests, the crowd shouted at the police things like, “you are working class too”, and chanted “shame”.

The police had two vans they were using to transport one person at a time to jail until the Monroe County Sheriff showed up with a van capable of transporting more people, at which they filled it with 8 or 9 women from the group.

TWEAN (Time Warner Entertainment-Advance/Newhouse Partnership) News Channel of Rochester L.L.C d.b.a. YNN left before the arrests began as the 11 o’clock news had ended. Crews stayed from Newport Television LLC, 13WHAM (formerly WOKR ABC) although their large production van left before midnight.

Around 12:30 a.m. a woman drove the wrong way down South Clinton. When she approached the police barricade, one of the officers approached her and told her she was driving the wrong way and to turn around.

I left around 1 a.m. before all the arrests were completed, although it appeared that only about 10 people remained in the park at that time. As I heard later, 32 people were arrested.

Mayor Thomas S. Richards did not speak with the protesters beforehand and did not arrive to witness the arrests.

As a fan, I looked forward to seeing Leonard Cohen: Songs from the Road so I headed out to The Little (240 East Ave.) to see it tonight. I had a decent, light dinner at the cafe beforehand and was generally having a good night. I spoke with a woman who encouraged me to become a member of The Little — I often consider it, but my first step is always to go see a film.

So I settled in to watch. I was astonished at the dreadfully poor quality of this concert documentary. Edits were out of the 1970′s “variety hour” playbook — I was fully expecting a pan to the overhead lights so the camera’s Orthicon tube would render its unnatural flare. The cinematography looked like someone’s uncle’s wedding footage, albeit physically stable.  But the images often drifted in-and-out of focus, had copious electrically-powered zooms, terrible framing, and many camera-related glitches from the low-light situation. Editing was even worse as it was choppy like a kid with A.D.D. The editors also frequently switched between a right-facing wide shot to a left-facing close-up and back, requiring the viewer to constantly reorient themselves. The only good of it all were a few longer-than-average shots tightly highlighting Cohen’s age-weathered face.

The music (and sound, thankfully) were excellent. I’m always amazed that the man is still playing music, but he is — and looks to have no intention of stopping. His singing retains a depth of emotion often lost after the thousandth rendition. So save your $10 and instead go to buy a couple used CD’s that you don’t already have. And go find a picture of the man and look at that while you listen.

Toward the end of the movie I had to resort to earplugs — not because the music was loud, but to drown out the quiet, constant chatter from (you guessed it!) the woman who wanted me to become a member. As someone who loves movies, I’m enamored of the Dryden with its excellent projection, and sound, and spoiled by my fellow cinephiles’ respectful silence. If the Little skimps on anything it’s the quality of the projection and sound (with tonight being a rare exception) and the patrons are self-absorbed jerks who can’t keep their mouths shut for a measly 90 minutes.

Although, I must admit, membership is tempting in the sense that it’s like paying for prisons. For if it weren’t for the Little, the gentrifying class would certainly migrate to my precious Dryden and begin ruining it. So perhaps I will join — and maybe someday I’ll have the opportunity to have my explanation of why I’m a member printed on one of their posters.

The Beast Pageant screened at the Dryden Theater at George Eastman House (900 East Ave.) tonight. It took me a while to extricate my thoughts from the various sets I helped build and from the scenes I acted in, but I think I finally have a grip on what great all-around acoustic soloist Jon Moses, and Albert Birney were getting at.

On its surface, The Beast Pageant follows Abe from his lifeless industrialized existence on a journey of reconnection with the natural world. It’s all told in fantastical dream language, so time, space, and reality really have no grounding. It just is its own special place.

But dig deeper, and there’s a layer about the beauty of human beings. Moses even used the phrase “it’s an anti-aibrushing movie” in the question-and-answer. And by that, he means that the movie defies the media-generated images of the human form. All of us who acted as part of the natural world were nude (unless fully covered in costume). And the point is we’re just regular people. We didn’t spend 6 months prior to the film with a personal trainer to ensure our bodies were picture-perfect; rather we were all just people from around town who live normal lives.

This was the most consistently shocking element. You’ll note that neither the D&C article nor the one in City Newspaper made mention of the near-constant nudity on screen. And it’s because they can’t unless they also subtly condemn it. So the authors of those pieces, finding a work they genuinely liked, opted instead to simply omit that fact.

To me this is a terrible precedent. It’s not as if anyone in the U.S. does not see themselves naked at least once a day. Yet through the media’s constant condemnation of the human body, we are taught to loathe the sight of it. And through that we loathe ourselves. And, oddly enough, we strive to buy products to give us satisfaction — so the media will approve of our appearance.

And so that theme runs through The Beast Pageant as well. The giant machine in Abe’s apartment is an entertainment system (in addition to personal companion, and provider of all his physical needs.) The machine resists Abe’s attempt to escape — much as the media machine resists the existence of The Beast Pageant.

But somehow, I think The Beast Pageant is going to win, one way or another.