Love and Death

As I sit here writing this, the rain pounding sonorously off the corrugated steel roof outside my office, a pensive mood overtakes me. The office is emptying out for the day and a serene quiet is replacing the droning din of workday bustle, a quiet which somehow endures, in bold defiance of the deafening raindrops. It's been a while since I've written about Kenya, either privately or for public blogging consumption, but that will have to wait just a little while more.

This post comes with a warning to the faint of heart and anyone with an aversion to artsy-fartsiness. It's only hope for redemption is that it's sincerity might be recognized.

This morning I woke to the news of Ingmar Bergman's death. I was informed by the CNN ticker chugging its way across the bottom of the screen, drifting over my bowl of banana-laced Wheat Flakes and breaking into my sleep-clouded consciousness. I've just now learned that Michaelangelo Antonioni has passed away as well. That's two giants of film in one day. I'm still holding my breath. These things have a way of coming in threes.

Upon hearing this new, I was filled with that dull sensation of loss you experience when somebody famous passes on at a ripe old age; I didn't know either of these men personally, after all, and they weren't the least bit aware of my existence. Nor are their deaths particularly tragic. They may have played their chess matches more skillfully than most, but in the end Death will have us all in check-mate.

Yet for me, and undoubtedly I'm not alone in this, the news resonates on a deeper chord. If you've lived life to a sufficient degree of fullness and depth, you have encountered a few artists who may have shared a piece of themselves with you, created something that has connected with you more intimately than anything you've experienced in your everyday waking life.

Now, I won't think any less of you if you've never seen a Swedish film in your life, and maybe you could care less about some old Italian guy you've never heard of. Come to think of it, I hope you don't disown me after reading this. But for me, movies (or film, or cinema, or what have you) have greatly influenced my life and shaped the way I see the world. It's difficult to make it through adolescence unscathed when your best friends in 8th grade are Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese. And that might be why I find significance in these deaths.

For a while there, living through movies was better than reality. It was an escape from the world I walked through each day, which to me was a mundane, flat, and generally uninteresting existence. At the same time, a serious, oftentimes foreign film could open my eyes to the beauty of even the simplest, most commonplace aspects of life.

Curiously, here in Kenya I've rediscovered an appreciation for movies as a means of escape - there's arguably a greater psychological need for escape here than there ever was in upstate New York. There are two cinemas in town that play second-run summer popcorn flicks for around $3 a pop, and I don't think I've ever gotten so much enjoyment out of these dumb, flashy movies as I have here. Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Shooter, Ocean's 13 - I'll watch them all, and with an uncritical eye. Criticism is superfluous and finding fault is completely besides the point, something I've only come to understand during my time in Kisumu.

Late night TV is blissful - after 12:30, there's a channel that plays Turner Classic Movies straight through till dawn. A lot of atmospheric '70s horror and sci-fi (like Coma and Poltergeist). The other night Antonioni's Zabriskie Point was on, and I stayed up, riveted, until 3:30am, then caught a few hours of sleep before getting up for work at 6:30. The film is a super dated hippie movie advocating free love, bad acting, and The Revolution, with a soundtrack featuring Pink Floyd and the Dead. I found myself mesmerized, though, like I was watching it for the first time. The last time I can remember getting so sucked into a movie late at night on TV was watching Vittorio de Sica's Umberto D when I was around fifteen, and falling asleep on the couch as the sun was rising.

Both Bergman and Antonioni lived long, full lives (they were 89 and 94, respectively), and their deaths shouldn't be mourned so much as their lives and careers should be celebrated. I won't bore you with obscure film trivia, but you've probably been affected by their work more than you think, if only indirectly. There's no way a Woody Allen movie, especially his earlier ones, would be the same if it wasn't for Bergman's influence. Love and Death is virtually unimaginable without the dour Swede (or Dostoevsky, for that matter, but that's another obituary). And, together with James Bond, Antonioni's portrayal of a fashion photographer in 1966's Blow Up, set in Swinging London, is basically the prototype for Austin Powers.

Sure, these guys are almost too easy to spoof. In exploring the dimensions of tragedy, strangeness, and absurdity in life, both Bergman and Antonioni took the craft of film-making to unprecedented realms, and I wouldn't trust anyone who claimed to understand the intention or purpose of their every shot. But the beauty of film is its open-endedness: an objective, unalterable image permanently committed to celluloid, which can yet be interpreted and understood differently by everyone who watches it. It's no less appropriate to laugh than to cry, and often your reaction depends on your own individual mood and circumstances, adding a wholly unpredictable element to the movie-going experience.

So, in closing, that's just a hint of what film means to me. Reflecting on the lives of the these two greats allows me to gain perspective on my own life. I'm not devastated by their passing, so much as I am mindful of my own influences and the roots of my creative aspirations. I promise to get back to Kenya the next time I write, which with any luck (and motivation) will be sooner rather than later.