Annie Hall

Why do books still exist?  For that matter, why do stages?  One would think that the inventions of film and television would have made them both obsolete.  There must necessarily be something that a book can do that a movie cannot, or the natural selection of memes (not the internet medium, but the original sense of a social concept that behaves like a gene) would have made them extinct fifty years ago.  And such a position is not difficult at all to support.  Can you imagine a movie version of My Name is Red?  Impossible.  Or Tropic of Cancer? 

And by the same token, the very appearance of Film in the natural order of things means that it must occupy some niche, that there is something a film can do that a book or a play simply cannot.  Of course there is the matter of visual spectacle, that's obvious enough.  I can't  imagine Independence Day or Pacific Rim doing very well as a musical. But there is something else to film.  An overlapping of thought and reality is possible in that medium that is extremely difficult to make clear in a book, and nearly impossible on the stage.  On the page, the reader must either be led through the process, or deliberately misled if the effect is to succeed.  On the stage, scene changes, or at least lighting cues are necessary whenever there's a movement between past and present.  If one's goal is to meld the two, to show how the "real" world takes place at the same time as the world in our minds,  there can't be such lines drawn.  To that end, Annie Hall does exactly what film was meant to do, and in a way that I don't know has been successfully duplicated since.

Which is not to say that I liked it.  Just that it was brilliant.

E.M. Forster: Howard's End

There are evidently some out there who view this book as Forster's best work.  As for me, I wouldn't even put it in the top five . . . it lacks the tidiness and unity of Passage to India, the thematic clarity of A Room With a View, and the personal connection of Maurice.  Even The Razor's Edge had more of what I have come to appreciate from Forster, everything just works so nicely as a unit, in a word: craftsmanship.  Forster is a master craftsman, as demonstrated in nearly all of his other work.  Why has he sacrificed that endearing quality here?  Rather than being disappointed, one has to marvel upon realizing that behind  this very sloppiness lies the whole meaning of the book.

Forster throws a winking hint to the reader about a third of the way through, possibly just when one is wondering where this is all going:

"Margaret realized the chaotic nature of our daily life, and its difference from the orderly sequence that has been fabricated by historians.  Actual life is full of false clues and sign-posts that lead nowhere.  With infinite effort, we nerve ourselves for a crisis that never comes" (103).

Throughout the book, the reader, especially if conditioned by other literature, is wondering who will end up with whom.  For whom does Forster intend Charles?  And for whom Paul?  In any other book, or indeed in any modern movie, such a character would be happily coupled with one of the females by the end of the book.  Forster, pointedly rebelling against such silliness, does no such thing.  The book is not a commentary on relationships at all, but rather on our irresistible human tendency to make narratives out of everything. 

Even in our daily lives, if something happens that seems foruitious or significant, our instinct is to wonder "What does it mean?" and work it into our personal narrative somehow.  If the event is startling enough, it may even prompt us to rewrite the narrative to accomdate it.  For Forster, this is not the way life works.  There is no narrative, no underlying structure to the things that happen in our lives.  The simply happen, and they may or may not end up having significance on the last page.  Life is filled with "red herrings", as he puts it, and this book properly reflects his view.  While not a delight to read, it is perhaps more brilliant for that than if it had all worked out in a way that left us feeling like the last piece of a puzzle had been properly fit into its niche.

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Friedrich Durrrenmatt: The Visit

 I found this piece to be hilariously entertaining.  The comic possibilities were leaping off the page, and I found it very eaasy to visualize a directorial approach that would have the audience rolling in the aisles.  Unlike The Physicists, the comedy was mostly situational, and wouldn't depend entirely on the comedic chops of the leads.  Sadly, Durrenmatt was not content to write something at once astute and hilarious.  He had to tack on an ending that felt disjointed and didactic.  How much better this play would have been if that last scene followed the tone of the rest of the piece, instead of lapsing into Greek rhetoric of the most obvious and tedious sort.  I would have much preferred it if Ill, the protagonist (?) was spared at the last minute, and then unceremoniously dispatched by the panther that had been prowling around ominously for the bulk of the play. What a great piece it would have been then!  In fact, maybe I'll do a quicky rewrite if I'm ever called upon to direct it . . .