Stuck in Love

It's been a while since I've written a movie review; I watched Stuck in Love yesterday. It's a sweet indie rom-com that comes full circle, perhaps somewhat dulled by its rehashed storyline but memorable because of its cast.

Stuck in Love tells the story of a family of writers, starring Greg Kinnear as best-selling writer Bill Borgens. Bill, still in love with his ex-wife Erica (Jennifer Connelly), has lost the will to write; Bill's daughter, Sam (Lilly Collins), is devastated by her mother's 'betrayal' and doesn't believe in love until she meets Lou (Logan Lerman), a good-natured, borderline naive boy who is determined to win her heart (I apologize profusely for the platitude). Sam's brother Rusty (Nat Wolff) is romantic and awkward, falling for and idealizing Kate (Liana Liberato), who is a recovering alcoholic.

Flaws, first: Collins and Lerman's chemistry isn't Dicaprio-Winslet but works sufficiently, partly because they both have an 'indie' vibe to them that works for the movie. The film also had an all-too 'complete circle' feel to it - including irrational plot jumps and lack of theme/character development - that diminished its standing as a 'serious' indie film.

Then again, it wasn't intended as one but succeeds as an artsy film nonetheless, especially with its recurring theme of writing/books.

“I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone's heart. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark.”

Sylvia Plath

On this day 81 years ago, Sylvia Plath was born in Boston; she would go on to become, as Joyce Carol Oates put it, "one of the most celebrated and controversial of postwar poets writing in English." It's a pity, therefore, that when people remember Plath they first think of her suicide and not her poems, which trap her anguish and imagination in strict-tempoed lines, unveiling them to each new reader.

Plath's poems have taught me to rhyme deftly and repeat with subtlety; among her poems, Daddy, Lady Lazarus, A Mad Girl's Love Song, A Life, April Aubade remain as some of my favourites. Her poems carry a feminine grace yet maintain the temperament of a woman who, as Ted Hughes declared, "saw her world in the flame of the ultimate substance and the ultimate depth."

May her poems be ever-treasured and read.

RIP, Cory Monteith

I watched Glee only because of Finn and Jessie's Girl will always be one 

of my favourite performances on the show. RIP Cory. 

A writer needs three things: experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.

Happy birthday, William Faulkner! As much as I'd like to be re-reading As I Lay Dying right now, I'm swamped in work.

But, an homage to my favourite Faulkner quote (thus far):

“In a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep you are not. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were. I don't know what I am. I don't know if I am or not. Jewel knows he is, because he does not know that he does not know where he is or not. He cannot empty himself for sleep because he is not what he is and he is what he is not. Beyond the unlamped wall I can hear the rain shaping the wagon that is ours, the load that is no longer theirs that felled and sawed it nor yet theirs that bought it and which is not ours either, lie on our wagon though it does, since only the wind and the rain shape it only to Jewel and me, that are not asleep. And Jewel is, so Addie Bundren must be. And then I must be, or I could not empty myself for sleep in a strange room. And so if I am not emptied yet, I am is.”

There wasn't really much else to do. Make something, and die.

Amsterdam by Ian McEwan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When Molly Lane, a flirtatious restaurant critic, dies from amnesia (inferred), her former lovers Clive Linely - a celebrated composer - and Vernon Halliday - editor for The Judge - reconvene at her funeral. Also at the funeral are George Lane, Molly's widowed (and detestable) husband, and Julian Garmony, who is running for prime minister and also once Molly's lover.

The memory of Molly trails Clive as as he works on his chef d'oeuvre, and accompanies Vernon as he struggles to save his declining newspaper. As the debut of Clive's symphony in Amsterdam inches closer, and while Garmony continues his campaign, Clive and Vernon encounter ethical dilemmas that force them to choose between what is 'morally right' - at the cost of their friendship - and what is 'best' for their personal objectives and careers.

Amsterdam is a thoroughly personal story; regardless of the scope of events its characters deal with, their each whim has its base on firmly grounded - and even depraved - personal desires. Both Clive, who struggles with writing his "Millennial Symphony", and Vernon, who attempts to save his newspaper, gladly dive into reprobate, degenerate waters to achieve their aims: the former does it to write the piece of a lifetime, and the latter does it for a return to glory.

Amsterdam is darkly humorous, well-structured and poetically written. Especially during McEwan's expressive, elegiac accounts of Clive's music do readers understand why The Times acknowledged him as one of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945." It is a quick yet thought provoking and plot-chasing read that will leave readers thinking about its beginning (spoiler) at its end.

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“We knew so little about each other. We lay mostly submerged, like ice floes with our visible social selves projecting only cool and white. Here was a rare sight below the waves, of a man's privacy and turmoil, of his dignity upended by the overpowering necessity of pure fantasy, pure thought, by the irreducible human element - Mind. ”