Amuleto

Amuleto (Anagrama, 2007)
por Roberto Bolaño
España, 1999

"Yo soy la amiga de todos los mexicanos. Podría decir: soy la madre de la poesía mexicana, pero mejor no lo digo. Yo conozco a todos los poetas y todos los poetas me conocen a mí. Así que podría decirlo. Podría decir: soy la madre y corre un céfiro de la chingada desde hace siglos, pero mejor no lo digo. Podría decir, por ejemplo: yo conocí a Arturito Belano cuando él tenía diecesiete años y era un niño tímido que escribía obras de teatro y poesía y no sabía beber, pero sería de algún modo una redundancia y a mí me enseñaron (con un látigo me enseñaron, con una vara de fierro) que las redundancias sobran y que sólo debe bastar con el argumento.

Lo que sí puedo decir es mi nombre". --Amuleto, p. 11

No sé donde empezar con esta novelita corta, pero supongo que debo notar que el personaje que habla arriba se llama Auxilio Lacouture y es uruguaya de nacimiento. Al mencionar el hecho de que Auxilio es la narradora uruguaya de una obra ambientada en México y escrita por un chileno que vivía en España, sólo quiero subrayar la idea de que Amuleto tiene que ver con asuntos latinoamericanos tanto con asuntos mexicanos. O sea, que el agujero negro de su desesperación es de alcance internacional. Construida como una obra testimonial en primera persona, la narración ofrece una visión traumatizada de los trece días que Auxilio pasó "encerrada en el lavabo de mujeres de la cuarta planta de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras en septiembre de 1968" (51): en otras palabras, los recuerdos de una testiga a los días sangrientos de '68 cuando centenares de personas perdieron las vidas a las manos de los granaderos y tanques del gobierno de México. Aunque no voy a decirles lo que la pobrecita vi durante ese período, Bolaño lo logra con su don de diálogo (Auxilio sobre un joven escritor: "la novela era mala, pero él era bueno" [39]), sus sorpresitas cuentísticas (el capítulo donde la narradora, sufriendo de escalofríos, hace pronósticos raros sobre el futuro de varios autores es divertidísimo), y una protagonista tan "fidedigna" en cuanto a sus fragilidades humanas que casi salta de las páginas del libro. Aunque uno nunca está seguro si Auxilio es un poco loquita o borracha además de ser aterrorizada por sus experiencias a UNAM, esta incertidumbre no disminuye el horror de una historia en la cual México, DF parece convertirse en la boca del infierno de una generación entera. En resumen, otra obra maestra total por parte de Bolaño. (http://www.anagrama-ed.es/)
*
Amulet (New Directions hardcover, 2006)
by Roberto Bolaño (translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews)
Spain, 1999

"I am a friend to all Mexicans. I could say I am the mother of Mexican poetry, but I better not. I know all the poets and all the poets know me. So I could say it. I could say one mother of a zephyr is blowing down the centuries, but I better not. For example, I could say I knew Arturito Belano when he was a shy seventeen-year-old who wrote plays and poems and couldn't hold his liquor, but in a sense it would be superfluous and I was taught (they taught me with a lash and with a rod of iron) to spurn all superfluities and tell a straightforward story.

What I can say is my name." Amulet, pp. 1-2

I'm not sure where to begin with this short little novel, but I guess I should note that the name of the character speaking above is Auxilio Lacouture and that she's an Uruguayan by birth. On mentioning the fact that Auxilio is the Uruguayan narrator of a work set in Mexico that was written by a Chilean who was then living in Spain, I only wish to draw your attention to the idea that Amulet has to do with Latin American matters as much as Mexican ones. Or rather, that the black hole of its despair is international in scope. Constructed as a work of first-person testimonial literature, the narrative offers up a traumatized vision of the thirteen days that Auxilio spent "shut up in the women's bathroom on the fourth floor of the faculty of Philosophy and Literature in September 1968" (54)--in other words, the memories of a witness to those bloody days in '68 when hundreds of people lost their lives at the hands of the Mexican government's tanks and riot police. Although I'm not going to spell out just what the poor creature saw during that time period, Bolaño pulls it off with his gift for dialogue (Auxilio on a young writer: "The novel was bad, but he was good" [38]), his little storytelling surprises (the chapter where the narrator, suffering from feverish chills, makes weird predictions about the future of various authors is totally entertaining), and a protagonist so "lifelike" in regards to her human frailties that she almost leaps out of the pages of the book. Although one's never sure if Auxilio's character is a little crazy or drunk in addition to just being terrorized from her experiences at UNAM, this uncertainty doesn't lessen the horror of a story in which Mexico City seems to transform itself into the mouth of hell for an entire generation. In short, another complete masterpiece from Bolaño. (http://www.ndpublishing.com/)

Bolaño

Note: This review is based on the original Spanish version of the novel. Although I've only read selected chapters from Chris Andrews' New Directions translation, I've borrowed his translations here to give non-Spanish speakers a taste of Bolaño in English.

The Taking of Power by Louis XIV

La prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV (Criterion DVD, 2008)
Directed by Roberto Rossellini
France, 1966
In French with English subtitles

For an altogether different take on the accumulation of power and wealth from an Italian filmmaker, you could do a whole lot worse than to sit down with this Roberto Rossellini-directed period piece originally produced for French TV in 1966. While Louis XIV has all the bad hair and gaudy finery of a generic costume drama, Rossellini's approach is anything but pedestrian. Drawing a Machiavelli-like bead on the 17th-century king's gradual transformation from a fun-loving mama's boy into the monarch who really stuck it to the French aristocracy, the director craftily constructs a meditation on both the nature and the trappings of power that's way more interesting than the silly looking photo below might lead you to believe. Since pudgy, non-professional actor Jean-Marie Patte is something of a revelation as the Sun King, an unexpected bonus from the extra features on this disc is learning how Rossellini channeled Patte's on-camera jitters and inability to remember his lines into a performance that's something special--how funny to think that what looks like supremely regal indifference on Louis XIV's part might be largely due to stage fright from the actor playing him! A minor gem. (http://www.criterion.com/)

Clothes make the man: Louis XIV at Versailles

Gomorrah

Gomorra
Directed by Matteo Garrone
Italy, 2008
In Italian with English subtitles

After just missing a chance to see this Cannes Palme d'Or winner in Buenos Aires last month, I finally got to see the big screen version of Roberto Saviano's mob masterpiece last Friday. Although the film adaptation isn't quite as mindblowing as Saviano's book, it still delivers the moviegoing goods with five gritty and uniformly well-acted stories having to do with a few of the lesser-known organized crime activities--the manufacturing of bootleg haute couture, the prominent use of children as soldiers in the local gang wars, toxic waste dumping in Italy and abroad--said to be emanating out of Naples' real life slums. While all of these storylines will be familiar to readers of Saviano's riveting chronicle, Garrone keeps things interesting here by drifting in and out of the various narrative threads with few of the normal cinematic cues. Even more intriguingly, he boldly tells his story without any apparent unifying point of view--leaving it up to the spectator to determine the film's moral compass. Although those who like getting hammered over the head by American directors may miss the point, the result is a strong, unsettling work that would make a fine double bill with Francesco Rosi's classic Salvatore Giuliano. I look forward to adding the DVD to my small but growing collection of cinema italiano sometime soon.

For more on the book and film, see Barbie Nadeau's "Streets of 'Gomorrah'" in Newsweek here.

The Bone Gatherers: The Lost Worlds of Early Christian Women

The Bone Gatherers: The Lost Worlds of Early Christian Women (Beacon Press hardcover, 2007)
by Nicola Denzey
USA, 2007

Less a work of history in the traditional textual sense than an exercise in "reading" visual evidence from funerary art and epigraphic sources, Nicola Denzey's The Bone Gatherers offers up some fresh, interdisciplinary perspectives on the role(s) of Christian women in 4th-century Rome. Through the course of a series of case studies centered on various Roman catacombs and crypts, Denzey argues that "the images of women that speak to us in the material and visual evidence from the catacombs tell a radically different story" about the status of these women than the "official" one manufactured at the very time when church fathers were just ramping up their efforts to condemn females for being the descendents of Eve (pp. 80-81). While I don't claim to be any sort of an expert on all this, it seems clear to this uber-geek reader at least that Denzey, a Lecturer on the Study of Religion at Harvard, makes a very convincing case that's what's left of the world of the bone gatherers points to a different and more privileged position for women--as matrons of the arts, as martyrs, as sacred caregivers--than the "historic record" might lead one to believe after centuries of neglect and/or obfuscation by predominantly male church authorities. Whether this type of academic work is up your own uber-geek alley is another question, of course, but I found it interesting enough to recommend to those archeologically-inclined in general and to those pagans and Christians following along at the Art History and Support Your Local Library reading challenges in particular. A solid study. (http://www.beacon.org/)

Prof. Nicola Denzey

Vampyr

Vampyr (Criterion DVD, 2008)
Directed by Carl Th. Dreyer
Denmark, 1932
In German with English subtitles

Carl Theodor Dreyer's 1932 Vampyr, his first sound film, is as much an art statement as it is a vampire movie. Loosely based on a pair of 19th-century short stories by Sheridan Le Fanu, this recently restored print pairs a surrealistic narrative structure with Dreyer's usual compositional brilliance to create a true shadow world in tune with its subject. While the odd, intentionally disjointed plot has to do with the fate of a character named Allan Gray, an occult student/enthusiast who wanders into a strange inn on the outskirts of Paris late one night and immediately begins to suffer the effects of a series of supernatural encounters, one of the ways in which it breaks new ground is that the audience is never sure whether Gray is delusional, dreaming, or perhaps already dead (shots like the one below, where the character appears to see himself in a coffin, are of little help). Real life aristocrat Nicolas de Gunzburg gives a woozy, somnambulistic performance as Gray that's just perfect for the part, and Dreyer and his crew accentuate the oneiric elements in the script with a succession of images--ghost couples dancing to a band of ghost musicians, a gravedigger "undigging" a grave, a female vampire victim's carnivorous smile--noteworthy for their austere beauty. Maybe not the fastest-paced film ever--but the Man Ray-like visuals more than make up for it, trust me. (http://www.criterion.com/)

Note: I haven't seen all the extras on this two-disc set yet, but what I have seen has been impressive. Highlights so far include Jorgen Roos' Carl Th. Dreyer, a 1966 documentary on the director, and Casper Tybjerg's "visual essay" on the artists and artwork that influenced Dreyer's style on this film.

Booked to Die: A Mystery Introducing Cliff Janeway

Booked to Die: A Mystery Introducing Cliff Janeway (Charles Scribner's Sons hardcover, 1992)
by John Dunning
USA, 1992

For all this book's rather serious shortcomings (faux tough guy patter that almost always rings false, an uninteresting protagonist, side stories involving a thug and a love interest that lack all credibility whatsoever), I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that I actually enjoyed much of this thriller's plot. While some of that likely only had to do with the particular subculture explored in the novel, the world of book dealers and book scouts in Denver's used/rare book trade, I feel I must grudgingly give Mr. Dunning some pre-Da Vinci Code-style credit for pumping out a mystery that was almost as entertaining as it was preposterous! Rating: Eat a big bag of these and then tell me how you feel! (http://www.simonandschuster.net/)

John Dunning and his poseur hat

Sin Nombre

Sin Nombre
Directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga
USA and Mexico, 2009
In Spanish with English subtitles

I saw the U.S./Mexico coproduction Sin Nombre yesterday and thought it was a decent movie despite a couple of major flaws that continue to grate on me today. I should start by noting that first-time feature film director Fukunaga is to be commended for taking on the themes of Central American immigration to the United States and gang violence of the Mara Salvatrucha variety, two sometimes interrelated topics that have yet to receive much play from other U.S. filmmakers. In traveling scenes like the one pictured below, the director and his team even manage to highlight the desperation along the route to the so-called promised land in a manner reminiscent of both The Grapes of Wrath and Heart of Darkness. Unfortunately, other aspects of the film--like the way it turns into a typical thriller more and more as the main characters head north--are way less impressive on the storytelling end of things. While photogenic leads Paulina Gaitan (Sayra) and Edgar Flores (Willy/El Casper) do nice jobs as a Honduran teenager trying to make her way to family in New Jersey and a Mexican ex-gang member trying to flee from his old way of life, the way the sheltered teenager and the killer with a heart of gold so quickly develop a bond is unconvincing in the extreme: Hollywood, baby, Hollywood. Rating: 3/5 stars.

Three of the "nameless"

See "official" trailer w/cheesy voiceover here.