It's Hard to Explain

There is an underrated film I can watch again and again and again, as much as for the story as for the soundtrack. In younger days that film used to be Grease or the Labyrinth with their sing along, viewer pleasing tunes. And later Dirty Dancing. All popular films, all considered classics, the one I'm about to extol the virtues of less so, and less grown tired of. Much less so for there's nothing virtuous about it, though it must have some sort of cult following for in the last few years it has been televised repeatedly. And less tired of because it doesn't have that quality where watching it too much will ruin it for me. This is no high school romance or coming of age, this is grittier. This is the dark side of Hollywood, where personalities are split between day and night. Between legit and illegitimate. Between love and vengeance. Between attraction and impossible love. Between an attraction that can't go anywhere, for there are other factors at play, and a love that is then impossible as the film progresses. This is dangerous stuff, full of adult entanglements. This is the territory of crazy happy moments and crushing disappointment; of disillusionment: you can't be both, the good and the bad guy.

It wouldn't be true or fair to say these films have nothing in common with each other or in my liking of them, for I'm sure if I thought long and hard enough about them I'd find some common ground, perhaps some similarities. Even so it's hard to explain why I'm drawn to this yet to be named film. Because it's violent; it's bloody. And morally, well, it shakes you as it shakes the foundations of the anti-hero. The moral line gets confused, the moral line gets crossed, and once crossed the choices made have to be followed through on. There is no going back. There's a spiral effect, so that an understated man already doing wrong has to do more wrong. To correct, to balance, to pay back the wrongs others have done by committing further and more violent wrongs himself. His moral code is screwed up. But life has traps, and sometimes to get out of those traps the windows of morality have to be broken. For one to be saved, another has to be hunted.

This film is Drive.

Where Ryan Gosling is at his best. As the quiet, calm in every situation, toothpick chewing Driver. Who knows his skill lies in driving and makes no apology for exploiting it, but nor is he boastful. This is not a man with an ego on display, this is a man with a purpose. He says little, speaking only when words need to be spoken. His driving does the talking; his fists, like his mouth, talk only when necessary: when he's protecting his neighbour (and love interest), Irene, and when he's the loose end driving around.

The character of Driver is the film. There's something about him. There's something inside him (and yes, I pinched that from the soundtrack) that you as the viewer want to understand, but you never can. He's a mystery, an enigma. Cool and sure, or at times, in the presence of Irene, seeming nervy, and in others cool and capable of violence, of spilling blood. He's obviously not passionless as otherwise Irene wouldn't bring out the protector in him, nor Shannon his sense of loyalty, and yet there are barriers. He can seem distant, detached, expressionless. In certain situations he holds back something of himself.

It should be a gloomy film; it's not. Though I don't know why that is...perhaps because the portrayal of Driver is so interesting. He doesn't have to do what he does, but he does. Is he a lesser man because he does? Or would he be a lesser man if he didn't? I'm as torn as him. But is he torn though? It's hard to tell just as it is hard to explain my own condoning of his actions. These are not his battles. Irene's husband is the start of trouble and all the problems that then subsequently follow. Love takes him down this road; love makes the darker side of his personality show itself. And yet somehow his reasoning doesn't seem wrong. This is what had to be done. Irene's reaction to this other side of him: his brutality, his coldness is understandable but comes across as ungrateful also. Like Sarah in the Labyrinth, she seems to lack awareness of all that Driver has done for her. Whereas Driver doesn't seem to realise why she should be so alarmed by his actions. There was always going to be consequences; there was always going to be a leave-taking. The attraction was always going to be hard to explain.

Picture credit: Drive movie poster 2011

Written November 2019.

Tick-tock

The clock ticks, tick-tock, tick-tock, the crocodile is heard before it is seen. She approaches the man with burning hunger in her eyes, but it's a hunger that dies as she draws closer, for she sees the man is not a Captain Hook. He doesn't have his seasoned odour – he looks too young, he smells too ripe – and his body, like hers, ticks like a clock. His tick-tock however is muffled by flesh and layers of clothing. She'd have to bite off his hand to tell if he would be good to eat.

She conceals herself in the shade of some trees and listens: tick-tock, tick-tock goes her clock, tick...tock...tick...tock goes the man's. His is so slow. She wonders if he might have crocodile genes. She has heard of such things, of experiments done by men looking for youth and vigour; they were said to believe it could be possessed by eating crocodile meat and drinking the broth, but that was many many years ago. This man however could be an descendant of that kind.

How could she tell?

She'd have to get a closer look at his face, for that's where it was said change took place. And if that was the case, she'd recognise the crocodile in him.

*

The man has heard the different ticking: tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock but does not know where it comes from for there are trees and bushes all around the river. He knows however a crocodile is near, has him in sight. He is unafraid; he has wrestled many in his time and darted some before the kill. Science made him a crocodile hunter; the clock is what he's after. Just a few more years.

He has not got long though, for his current clock is slowing. Tick...tock....tick...tock...tick the time allotted is never enough. Seventy wasn't, nor eighty and now he's ninety five, and all his changes are mainly taking place on the inside. Subtle changes only but still. Time is running, running, running out. Though his skin is still fresh and plump and his mind agile and his muscles strong. And he looks young, unnaturally young.

This man has had his youth and more. And yet still wants more. He does not see what it costs and what it costs him still. Life not lived but lost in the pursuit of youth. Youth was always the goal even when he was in his own, only then it was about procuring it for other people and only later once he felt his prime had been reached did it become about extending his own. He reached his prime quickly. Men of experimentation do that. It's a law. Run some tests and if there are good results run them on yourself. Men seeking eternal youth and agelessness are selfish, and famous for manipulating women. They want fame, they want wealth, they want women and they want to live forever. More than women? Women too want some of these things but differently, and nobody's sure if women would want them at all if men didn't convince them of it.

This man though would have this croc and would take its strong tick-tock, tick-tock.

*

The crocodile hasn't moved from its hiding place nor seen the man's face; the man waits and watches, alert to any movement in the trees and bushes and the tick-tock, the steady tick-tock rhythm so unlike his own. One false move and either the man or the crocodile could lose their life, or in the man's case at the very least a limb. Statistics would say it's the man's to lose, but they'd be wrong for these two are more evenly matched, since the man is more crocodile than man. His features have already altered to include that of a crocodile grin, with the exception also that he is determined to live as long as a crocodile. The crocodile has no such desires nor such determination. The crocodile has very simple tastes. But life is never fair and rarely kind and so one will get what it wants and the other won't. After the deed's done, one will go back to the water and the fishes, and one will search for another tick-tock, tick-tock.

Picture credit: Captain Hook and Crocodile, Peter Pan.

Written November 2019.

The Giraffes and the Monkeys and the Lions and Me

The giraffes surrounded the car with us - a mum, a dad, a girl, and a dog under a blanket - inside it. They chewed and chewed and pulled leaves from the trees nearby, their long necks stretching, stretching, stretching, seemingly unconcerned that they'd halted our progress through this section of the park, on the way to the lions. Such tall, unusual creatures. Long legs, long necks, big eyes, and quick to scent a concealed dog, though too gentle to be anything but curious. Noses wrinkling in distaste at the odour. Sniff, sniff, not a leaf, and not a park animal. Could it be this taupe vehicle? Should we peer in and take a look?

One, the leader perhaps, decided it should and begun to angle its neck downwards. Its big face loomed towards the window. The dog sensing something was happening grumbled. Shush, Badger. You'll give yourself away. The giraffe discovered we weren't very interesting; not all that different from all the other humans he'd seen. Maybe he gave the others a signal to that effect because the group began to amble away and enabled us to move off, to the lions who were fat with food and having a snooze in the overgrown grass.

The monkeys from earlier we'd just survived. We were shaken, the car had some minor damage. The video made of that outing has lots of high pitched speaking and some language unsuitable for children. And all because of monkeys. Who were everywhere, and determined to make a closer inspection of any cars and their occupants. We escaped lightly, but not before voices had been raised and turned shriller, particularly mine which was more of a whine, an annoying whine. I wish video cameras were never invented! For even my remembrance of watching this back makes me cringe so that I reiterate with my parents: Shut up! Yes, tensions grew high on that family trip. A trip that was supposed to be novel, a treat, pleasurable was anything but.

And after the monkeys, well, anything was considered likely to happen. Would the lions claw our tyres? Would the car be rocked? I can't remember the exact year this was - the late 1980s? - without reviewing the video, but it sounds Jurassic Park-like, a very tame English version of it, since the bigger animals, especially those known in the wild to be ferocious, didn't bat an eyelid to our presence in their park territory. This was their normal.

It wasn't however mine. My brain circuits were going bananas. My senses were alert to the unusual, to danger, and primed for unforeseen thrills and spectacles. The car doors were locked from the inside and the seat wiggling was just containable, but the fireworks going off inside our heads weren't. Eyes and ears. Eyes and ears. Would you look at that? What was that?! Where?! There was nothing else to do but follow the road and creep along, section by section, and feign fear, feign enjoyment.

The real and make-believe emotions combined, with the real fear that a dog with white badger-like markings would be found in the passenger foot-well. The dog could not, would not, be separated from its family. He was too elderly for that. A sleepy farting animal. No, he would be quiet and would be hidden. There was no decision, the risk would be taken, but still the chance of him being discovered sent the adrenaline up a notch before we'd even entered and were essentially trapped in the park, in the car, with wild beasts.

I knew that this was not a zoo. Creatures were enclosed but free. There were no cages, as such, with bars, just perimeter fences around habitats which half-heartedly replicated the landscapes such beasts might be accustomed to. As for the weather, well, they had to make do, just as any man, woman and child on British soil. But really it was only marginally better than a zoo. It was an animal drive-thru with a lunch stop and a souvenir shop; an attraction not all that different from a theme park, just with animals in place of the rides.

Our fear, anyhow, was misplaced, for nothing tried to eat us and the dog, though he grumbled once or twice, went undetected. By its end I had ascertained and accepted that giraffes and monkeys and lions were facts; they did not just exist in picture books, but I was disappointed not to have seen Roald Dahl's window washing team.

Picture credit: The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me, Quentin Blake

Written November 2019.

Four Decades

A new year, a new decade. No, read on before you correct me, I haven't got the year wrong. I realise we've entered upon 2021 and that 2020 has just gone, but my new personal decade starts now. Well, okay, I tell a lie, little white lie that hasn't made my nose grow in the telling of it, as I started out on mine roughly three weeks ago, but who embarks on anything seriously around Christmas time? People are too caught up in the rush, the last minute buying and wrapping, and the fight to secure the perfect gift that says 'You're amazing!' or 'I Love You', and the right size turkey. Personally none of that really floats my boat, but this was not meant to be yet another post-Christmas post on my Scrooge 'bah humbug' attitude. I do Christmas, just less of it.

I do my 'festive' birthday less too, including the recent 4-0. Four nil to me. Four decades knocked flat. Four decades that were nothing to write home about; home's just down the road anyway so why write them a letter, an e-letter? Four decades where nothing really stands out. I was there; I'm still here. I grew from this big to this big. I did this, I did that. I went there, I returned. I tried, I gave up. I gave up, it seems to me, a lot and in some cases too soon. But you know what you know and you don't what you don't. And in others, well, you just know when it's not right, so the effort is not worth it because it will cost. Who will it cost? You. Just you.

But I gave too; and gave and gave, and drew back, when I had nothing left to give, everything had been, or was about to be, squeezed out of me, and when that was the last, the only, the best solution. The more you give and the more you take on the more you'll be taken advantage of. All lay load on the willing horse. I learned that the hard way and chose not, in spite of my birth sign, to continue being that willing horse. It wasn't winning whatever race this was that's for sure. The race to the knacker's yard? If it was I threw the jockey off and cleared a fence and still startled by this revelation galloped away. Into the sunset, to a better brighter future.

Did I ? Did I heck! No. In human terms, I hid, I avoided, I placed obstacles in the way. If I did this, if I did that, the old patterns would resume. The work would come home with me. Or I would go to it, to an empty but quiet office. Just me and humming technology. Too easy when you live on top of work and feel bound to complete, to tackle what you hadn't been able to because there just wasn't enough time in the average working day, the average working week when other demands were constantly being made. It was little like daylight robbery except I was the thief and not the victim, though of course I wasn't stealing anything; or a trespasser, on the premises when I shouldn't have been in spite of having keys and the entry codes. The only person I was stealing from was myself: I was stealing time, but anything to get ahead of the game and stop worrisome thoughts. That, I told myself, was the aim. That and to make my life, the new week, easier.

But there are limits to all that giving and I found them. A train wreck, a car crash. Yeah. Almost, almost. Nearly.

Life was too rushed, life was too busy, life and work couldn't be kept up with. I couldn't bluff. The mask kept falling, and falling, then it fell off and after that would only stay on for short periods; periods so short that anything lengthier was a battle of will and personality. I will get through this. I can do this, I can do this, I can do this. It will be fine. The heart will pump, the legs will run, the arms and hands will lift and carry, the brain will compute some things, not others, but it will do its best. It will cause the mouth to say stupid things or will make the mouth dumb and dry, so dry the tongue sticks to its roof. The body at fever pitch. The day divided into parcels of time: nearly there, nearly there, nearly home-time.

Yes, there is some good in selfishness, if you can find a pleasing way to frame it so as not to affront others or confound others with it. They wouldn't understand, if you were honest, the price paid for being responsible, dutiful, helpful, loyal. They couldn't be brought, if you tried, to see the chariot of the mind overturned and the horses yoked to it bolting.

So, cloak what you feel will be misunderstood, and be steadfast.

Picture credit: The Death of Hippolytus, 1860, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (source: WikiArt).

This post was written November 2019.