If I asked you now
Will you be my prince
Will you lay down your armour And be with me forever
When you open me
All the power in me moves
How you want to see
All the depths of me real
When you open me
All the power in me moves
I feel real
I love you Love you
When I look into your eyes
There's a danger inside
When I see the edge
I can never hide
See me runnin', runnin', running... ...to you... ...from you... ...to you
There's a strange love inside
It's getting louder, louder, louder, louder, louder
There's a danger I can't hide
Who I am, it's who I am, it's who I am
I'm in love!
I'm in love!
I'm in love!
I'm in love!
I'm in love!
I'm in love!
I'm in love!
I'm in love!
The deeply moving video for Conan Gray's new song called "This Song" shows the kind of innocent, fearless love so many of us were denied when we were growing up. It is lovely to see here...
To my husband: Happy Valentine's Day. I love you...
If I asked you now
Will you be my prince
Will you lay down your armour And be with me forever
When you open me
All the power in me moves
How you want to see
All the depths of me real
When you open me
All the power in me moves
I feel real
I love you Love you
When I look into your eyes
There's a danger inside
When I see the edge
I can never hide
See me runnin', runnin', running... ...to you... ...from you... ...to you
There's a strange love inside
It's getting louder, louder, louder, louder, louder
There's a danger I can't hide
Who I am, it's who I am, it's who I am
I'm in love!
I'm in love!
I'm in love!
I'm in love!
I'm in love!
I'm in love!
I'm in love!
I'm in love!
...an extraordinary little film with a big subtext, "About Endlessness" from 2021 by Swedish director Roy Andersson.
Somehow the films of Andersson have passed me by until now. He is the auteur who created "the Living Trilogy" of films: "Songs from the Second Floor" (2000), "You, the Living" (2007), and "A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence" (2014). And now, at 78 years of age, he has created the distillation of his body of work, a film that, at a scant 76 minutes, manages to pack in the meaning of existence in this universe.
I have seen this film described as "plotless" but that is not accurate. It is true that the film consists of 31 different vignettes, none lasting longer than a few minutes, that feature different people in different situations in different locations but there is certainly an overarching idea to Andersson's collection of seemingly unrelated narratives. A few characters recur but for the most part, we hop not only between locations but between time periods as well. Contemporary scenes at, for example, a train station, a food market, a bar, or on a crowded bus flow around scenes of WWII POWs marching through snow, an aerial view of an embracing couple floating over a bomb-ravaged Cologne (this vignette used for the poster, above, recalls Chagall's gorgeous 1913 painting Over the Town), even a brief view of Hitler's last moments in his bunker. The juxtaposition of daily--even banal--life (a father stops in the rain to tie his young daughter's shoe, a couple sit on a park bench and watch a formation of flying geese, a new grandmother snaps photos of her grandbaby) with the kind of horrors humankind is capable of creates a breathtaking kaleidoscopic perspective of life on this planet, a celebration of each moment big and small and a regard for the singular beauty embedded in our existence. But deftly and subtly intertwined with this profundity is a certain dark humor, a wry sense that finds absurdity in the banality and horror. The paradox of being alive. All in 76 minutes.
The closest the film comes to explaining itself is in a cute scene between two young college students, sitting in a nearly empty flat. While a young woman sits on a bed, a young man reads a text book and relates to her a startling fact he has just learned: that the first law of thermodynamics states all matter and energy can never be destroyed, only transformed. Therefore, he posits, none of us can ever end...all of our "energies" are never-ending. Endless.
The look of "About Endlessness" is a marvel too. A washed out color palette of neutrals, greys, and beiges provides an oppressive sense ("Oh, how daily life is..." Anton Chekov once remarked). His characters often sport white-powdered faces as though they are specters or ghosts in their own lives. But most astonishing is the fact that Andersson creates every single set on a soundstage, even the ones that seem to be outdoor locations like a soccer field. The labor-intensive process of creating these sets takes a month or more. Andersson himself says, "With 'About Endlessness' I want to continue to develop a cinematic language that is pared-down, simplified, refined, distilled, or however you choose to describe it. That’s what I mean by the expression abstraction. I strive to achieve that refinement, that simplification that is characteristic of our memories or our dreams. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to achieve this using a classic 'shooting on location' aesthetic. I have always preferred, and still prefer, to create and shoot all the scenes in a studio. It’s very costly and time consuming, but I feel that it’s worth it." I concur, as it gives "About Endlessness" its own controlled vernacular, almost as though we are watching one of Matthew Barney's art/sculptural films.
Recommend? Absolutely. And if such a film strikes you as "art house pretension," give it a go anyhow...with its short running time, it is enough time to dabble to see if the film resonates with you without investing hours.
Filmmaker Todd Ballantyne of ACB Films collaborated with the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum for a wonderful exploration of the landscapes of northern New Mexico that inspired this legendary artist. It is breathtakingly beautiful.
"Oh, By The Way" is my digital scrap book of things I like, things I would share with a close friend and say: “Oh, by the way, do you know of this artist/ clothing or interior designer/ model/ singer/ actor/ gorgeous man… or, have you seen this video/ photo/ film... or heard (or do you remember) this song/ band... or, read this book/ poem/ inspiring quote... or, visited this place/ museum/ restaurant/ famous building... or, have you heard of this amazing new scientific discovery?”
I am dedicated to posting the positive, the fascinating, the beautiful, the interesting, the moving, and the inspiring and uplifting. Sometimes I post cultural as well as personal observations, milestones, and remembrances. And just like life, all of these things may often have a bit of melancholy or even sadness in them, which is what makes our time here so lovely and bittersweet and precious.
Some of the photos, art, poetry, and prose are my own original work, credited with my initials, JEF. When it isn't, I always try to post links to the original source material, but often I find photos on the web that are not linked or other material that is not sourced. In these instances, I post them without malice since it is assumed that such things, by being globally posted on something as uncontrollable as the internet to begin with, are in the public domain. If you identify the source of an image that is not linked, please politely let me know (without accusing me of theft) and I will be happy to provide a link. If you are the owner of an image and would prefer it be removed, I am happy to do that as well.
I hope to inspire and entertain my readers with things that inspire and entertain me. There is a startling amount of beauty and creativity in the world and it enriches us all to participate in it.
All-time Favorite Films
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
After Hours (Hysterical, hair-raising ride through NYC at night)
Amelie
American Beauty (Alan Ball)
Baraka (Stunning, transcending—the "spiritus mundi" on film)
Belle et Bete (Cocteau)
Big Sleep, The (The epitome of film noir)
Bringing Up Baby (Hepburn & Grant—the epitome of screwball comedy)
Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, The (Greenaway)
Crash (Cronenberg—DIFFICULT subject, not for everyone)
Don’t Look Now (Nicolas Roeg—ultimate modern gothic horror)
Drowning By Numbers (Greenaway)
Easy Rider
Edward II (Derek Jarman)
Erendira (From magic realist Marquez’ brilliant short story)
Eyes Wide Shut (Kubrick's last film)
Fearless (Jeff Bridges—life and death)
Funny Bones (Leslie Caron, Jerry Lewis, and the brilliant Lee Evans)
Holiday (Hepburn & Grant)
Howard’s End (The ultimate statement of the unfairness of class systems)
