For some cosmically inscrutable reason, everything I read and watch now seems to be about war, and (even more specifically) about the second World War. I am in the midst of two books, as well as creeping along in the immense but less belligerent "Martin Chuzzlewit": Markus Zuzak's "The Book Thief" (set in Nazi Germany) and Irene Nemirovsky's "Suite Francaise" (Occupied France). On top of all this, I am watching "Grave of the Fireflies," an anime account of the bombing of Japan that is so immensely depressing that I have to watch it in two shifts, unable to bear the grinding unfairness of the plot for more than an hour at a time. "Suite Francaise" is proving to be lyrical and engrossing - a beautiful fabric woven of the mundane details of many lives. I am troubled, however, by my rather tepid initial reaction to "The Book Thief" (I am on page 173). The reviews I have read on LibraryThing and in various blogs have been glowing to an almost religious degree: readers don't just enjoy the book, they are converted, born-again Zusakians. Many people have sat down with it and refused to get up until they reach the very last page; others declared it to be the best book of last year. Thus far, I have found it inventive, but sometimes awkwardly so - so conscious of its own quirkiness that it trips over its own linguistic complexity. Here's hoping it wins me over in the next 375 pages!
My major accomplishments from yesterday were, well, kind of minor. I ventured outside for the first time in days, buoyed by my sudden and miraculous ability to consume food, and my ventures took me inevitably to the library, from whence I returned bearing an armload of graphic novels. Last year the bulk of my reading was made up of graphic novels, but I have yet to read one in 2007, so I immediately embarked on one that had been lying around neglected for months: Jessica Abel's tale of travels in Mexico (hers? perhaps, but not explicitly), "La Perdida". So far it is marvelous - one moment it is densely chaotic to the point of being unusually difficult reading, but then suddenly the clouds part and I have a moment of terrible clarity.
Other achievements: I continued my progress through the long and remarkably repetitive "Sharpe" television series, with the lackluster "Sharpe's Sword" (number 8 of 14 or 15). Sean Bean is, as always, fantastic (my fondness for Sean Bean, whom we like to call Seen Bawn in my house, is so profound that the Lord of the Rings trilogy [in its entirety] became the Story of Boromir. Poor Boromir), but the whole production has a sort of provisional quality, as if the cameras caught a half-hearted rehearsal rather than the final performance. Also, the constant parade of new lady-loves gives viewers the inevitable impression that they will just keep cycling through women until they find one who is equal to Sharpe. As well they should - some of them are pretty awful.
I also watched another film from Filmspotting's Animation Marathon, "Ghost in the Shell," which leaves only one film that I have yet to see, a film that is purportedly so depressing that it has been languishing in TiVo purgatory (along with "Umberto D" and others I am too frightened to watch): "Grave of the Fireflies." At any rate, "Ghost in the Shell" is a very similar experience to "Akira" - it feels radically and inadequately condensed, paradoxically both slight and convoluted, expositional and elliptical, and (appropriately enough, for a film about cyborgs) somewhat intensely cerebral and soulless. Or shall I say ghostless. Perhaps I have just come to expect a little more out of cyborgs and humanoid robots than this, spoiled by "Bladerunner" and "Battlestar Galactica." The whole film had more potential for emotional complexity than "Akira," I felt hopefully at the beginning, but ultimately it was somewhat static and considerably less weird (thumbs down for less weird movies) in its cast of characters.
"Ghost in the Shell" (1995)
dir. Mamoru Oshii
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