is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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I'll Sleep when I'm Dead: Antidote to Spiderman 2
I�ll Sleep When I�m Dead: Antidote to Spiderman 2
I�ll Sleep When I�m Dead was, for me, the perfect antidote to Spiderman 2. Perfect antidote, not because it is perfect, nor because it found some way to answer questions left unanswered by Spiderman 2, but because it demonstrated the impossibility of answering some of these questions with any finality. I fell in love with this movie when I saw the trailer, and then again when it opened with these lines, set against a shot of the hot Clive Owen standing in blowing tall grass on a cliff overlooking the ocean: �Most thoughts are memories. And memories deceive�.� I�ll Sleep When I�m Dead is a film about the impossibility of capturing a person�s life in words, the impossibility of ever adequately expressing love for another human being in words, the impossibility of rewriting a past you wish you had lived differently. And, even though it is a bleak film about loss, the very impossibility of expressing in words the meaning of these things that eat away at us when we have lost them, this is the film�s ray of hope, in a manner of speaking.
What do I mean? The fact that we cannot do justice in language to these things does not mean that they do not have effect. The love of another person, the meaning for you of that person�s life, your own mistakes that can never be made right: these are yours. No one other than you will ever understand them in precisely the way you do (even if memory deceives). And no one will ever be able to rob you of them, either. This is one way in which, existentially, you are utterly alone. But that very alone-ness is already punctuated or interrupted by the presence of others, because the regret and the love that you cannot adequately express in words, those things are possible only because of your attachments and your mistakes made with regard to other human beings. You are utterly alone, but never entirely.
That is a blessing and a curse. Utterly alone�like Peter Parker aka Spiderman (see the July 18 entry) no one will ever completely understand you. But also: no one will ever rob you of what is most yours. Utterly alone. But also never entirely alone�you only sense the impossibility of communication because you can�t help but try to communicate. And that�s because there are other people in the world� also for better and for worse. We can�t rid ourselves of the presence of others even when we might like to. I can surround myself with people I love. But I�ll still have inconsiderate neighbors, I�ll still have to take public transit, and I and my friends will never be the only people who want to climb Yosemite�s Nevada Falls in the middle of July. Utterly alone but never entirely. Sure every man is an island. But island-man can never get the water to stop touching him.
Most thoughts are memories, and memories deceive. It�s not only logic and reason that order our experience of the world. Non-rational things, irrational things, and things unexpressible in language, these also order our lives� for better and for worse�we might want to rid the world of avarice and delusion and selfish pride, but we wouldn�t want to rid it of love and imagination and compassion. Non-rational things, irrational things, things to which logic cannot always do justice. Human beings are complicated. So much potential for bad, so much potential for good. It can go either way at every single moment for every single human being.
That�s why I love a film that has the courage to tell a difficult story, that doesn�t give all the answers, that makes its viewers struggle to figure out the connections between its actors, and that doesn�t wrap up its message and send us on our way, satisfied that we know how things work. Because we don�t. We don�t know with certainty how things work because context continually changes what it means for us to be good and bad. There are few moral certainties, though certainly there are a few things of which we can be certain: it�s a bad idea to murder someone, and it is always wrong to do nothing in the face of injustice (Spiderman 2. Again.). I�ll Sleep When I�m Dead even complicates the simplicity of those two certainties by pitting them against each other.
So, even though I�ll Sleep When I�m Dead is far from being a �perfect� film, and there are aspects of the plot I really do wish were otherwise, nonetheless, and even though the film has been called �the darkest film of summer 2004,� I found it endlessly more hopeful than Spiderman 2, at least in terms of the effects these films had on me as a viewer. I�ll Sleep When I�m Dead made me think about what human justice, love and responsibility require of us. Spiderman 2 made me panic in the face of its empty soulless prescriptions.
Now I want to go see King Arthur, because: Clive Owen. And because maybe it will be the summer blockbuster that gives me what I want from a summer blockbuster? But I'm also willing to go see Dodgeball. Or Before Sunset. Does anyone want to go to the movies with me?
12:03 a.m. - July 19, 2004
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