Friday 19 March 2010

LOST FILMS and TANGO
















How do films get lost, so many brilliant films, lost to nonsense and crap?.. I love the Oscars but some films are never talked about. One in particular is The Man who Cried directed by Sally Potter. I love this film, the music, the acting, and yet nothing is said about it at all. The Tango Lesson she also made is neglected. I am not a fan of Four Wedding and a Funeral it was a huge success but I found it banal. The title says it all and I love mystery and not necessarily the obvious. There are so many things that are good in Potter's films the dance sequence in The Tango Lesson is erotic and flamboyant.
Yesterday I was back having Tango lessons in Los Angeles it felt so good, it puts the smile back into my face, there is nothing better than being wizzed round a dance floor, the intimacy the fast pace. I had a fear of dancing since the age of eight when a girl called Helena Fairley teased me about being porky, so I swore I would never do it again. Forty years later I want to conquer the fear. It cures depression I hope. On this subject Doctors seem to give out anti depressants like sweeties. I will not take them although I can suffer badly from this thing. I used to stay all day in bed until a kind friend dragged me out to a yoga class in 1990 and I skipped home afterwards. It seemed to cure it. I became obsessed. Why is it that they give these pills out, the side effects can be devastating on other aspects of your life that could give you the pleasure needed to make life worth living?. They can make men impotent and women like zombies. All the greatest artists on the planet seemed to have suffered and used it. Byron, Siegfried Sassoon, Mozart, philosophers, painters, in my case I don't want anything to dampen my enthusiasm for life. Why don't they let me use amphetamine? I could achieve three times as much. No the powers that be seem to enjoy a dampened down human being,
Back to films, my favourite being Peter Greenaway's film, The Cook, The Thief his wife and her lover, with music by Michael Nyman, a crazy mixed up film, with a fabulous script, and beautifully shot, terrible language and great looking. There is a lot wrong with it too, and it makes it all the more perfect, starring Helen Mirren..Peter Greenaway looks depressed too. Perhaps you have to be if you wish to be truly creative so that you can see clearly all aspects of life.

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