Errata is a web journal written by Robert Davis who has neither spent a night in a ghost town nor pulled a turnip from the earth. He doesn't even know if turnips grow in the ground. Perhaps on trees, like candy corn. Therefore, Errata is a non-commercial project.

Observation #1: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious."

Observation #2: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious" at the top of your lungs. Bring your eyebrows together before you say it. Effective!

Observation #3: Same for books. Even at libraries.

There is a prize for people who correctly guess the thing about Metropolis, Nevada.

Except where the text specifically states otherwise, Errata's vagaries are indicated vaguely and its authors are indistinct in the traditional way of the Internet, except where the authors lay claim to their work. In some cases Robert Davis lays claim to work that is not his own but has been abandoned like so many ghost towns. Except where held presently, fistfuls of dirt are suspended via dispersal, or dispersed via suspension (in the air), and thus their dissolution is their transcendence, or their transcendence is their dissolution. And yet our eyes tear, and our vision is impaired, demonstrating for the umpteenth time that one entity's gain is another's fit of sneezes. Except where indicated, storms shall outlive the clay upon which they rain, unless storms are improperly delimited by their clouds, which dissolve, rather than by their inevitable return. Thus the clay loses, unless the clay is said to own the storm, to use it to make itself heavy, to make itself cling to white garments, refuse dispersal, cake upon the facades of abandoned buildings, and sit like Man [sic] upon the earth where it is pelted by a storm that it owns. In which case the clay still loses, if you ask us.

Some of the above is legally binding and should be considered a mental contract between Errata and those upon whom it acts. The bit about the prize should be considered an overstatement insofar as prizes differ from dirt and prize dispersal differs from dirt dispersal. Please recall that ownership is a weight and, therefore, hope that you do not win the prize.

One day Errata or its representatives will call upon you for a favor. It is expected that you will hop-to without delay.

You may contact Robert Davis by email unless it's about the rock that was thrown in anger. The rock is more properly called a clod. Why do you continue to raise the topic?

18 June 2004

Theme Slivers

Sean Spillane over at Bitter Cinema had brief but interesting entry yesterday about a web site that categorizes a few movies by theme, mostly simple themes and mostly science fiction.

The attempt to categorize by theme reminded me of Acquarello's far more thought provoking site Strictly Film School, whose theme and genre pages point not to movies but to filmmakers. The categorizations are necessarily broad, since they cover entire ouevres, but a click on one of those directors will reveal that these are no four-word film reviews.

What's interesting I think is how wide a filmmaker's scope can be even while working within an apparently constricting framework. Take Ozu, for example. His style is among the simplest of any major director, and he made the same movie over and over again — or so his critics sometimes say, derisively — using the same actors, plots, names, shots, and settings. But in a thematic breakdown like the one at Strictly Film School, Ozu falls under no less than three categories, all of them life-encompassing: "Aging/Adolescence/Death," "Generational Conflict," and "Human Condition." I think you could make the case for "Loss of Innocence/Toll of War" and "Isolation/Connection/Alienation/Ennui," too, especially as they relate to, say, aging and generational conflict.

It seems like a paradox, but by stripping his style bare Ozu seemed to bring more of the world into his grasp. A few other filmmakers — Truffaut, Tarkovsky — also cut across Acquarello's categorizations. Dewey, he of the lauded decimal system, probably would have considered this a flaw in the system. But no, I don't think so.

There's a movie in limited release in the US right now called The Five Obstructions, a collaboration between the world's oldest enfant terrible (to steal a line from Roger Ebert) Lars von Trier and his former mentor Jørgen Leth that makes this point, in a way. Not the simplicity-is-all-encompassing argument, but the bit about how limitations can be liberating.

It's true. I get the least done when my list of responsibilities and possibilities grows beyond a certain size, when it seems better just to lay on the floor and listen to the low rumble.

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