The Void

Inktober Challenge Week 3

In the introductions to the previous installations of this little series, I tried to convey what I was feeling while I was undertaking this, for me, very difficult endeavor. I wanted them to feel light-hearted in a way, as though the things that I tried to express didn’t really matter, and I feel that I did you and myself a disservice.

This is what I want to write with all the fibers of my aching, conflict-averse soul:

Oftentimes, I feel overwhelmed by the smallest things, which send my ADHD-riddled brain into an hours-, even days-long stupor. The fact that I managed to come as far as I did, is enough for me — I’m proud of myself.

However, well, actually:

Writing into the void is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. Ever. The humiliation in combination with crushing self-doubt sent me into a crippling death spiral, out of which I’m still finding my way out.

There, I said it.

Any guide on how to write a (good) essay will tell you as early as the introduction to the course that writing from a place of pure pain is not a good idea. A personal essay should be personal, yes, but you should’t (and I agree) overwhelm your reader with too much of yourself. Instead, your experience should invite the reader into your world, make them see the connection to their own lives — maybe even provide them with the right words for a feeling they never could find themselves.

This is why I have to write out this feeling that had me trapped all this time. Write it in all its ugly drama.

Because I know for a fact that this experience is far from unique. I know that feeling discouraged, if no-one perceives your work, creative or not, just plain sucks. I also know that talking about it is weighed down by a shit-tonne of shame. Hell, I’m ashamed right now. It’s awful.

Shame for being a drama queen, shame for caring about me and my stupid endeavors while there’s war everywhere, shame for being safe, shame for feeling lost.

I know that it’s impossible to stop feeling shame — it’s the worst and clingiest of emotions. So is there a way to at least try to feel less shame for our seemingly unimportant work woes, family matters and everything that we deem too dramatic to give it the time of day?

I think we have to try. I think, we have to illuminate the small stuff, give it space to breathe and acknowledge the pain it causes us in order to better cope with everything that’s happenning in the world right now.

P.S.: I also traveled and stuff.

P.P.S.: Oh, and here’re some fun reviews.

15. House of the Flying Daggers (2004)

House of the Flying Daggers was directed by Zhang Yimou and stars Andy Lau as Captain Leo, Zhang Ziyi as Mei, and Takeshi Kaneshiro as Captain Jin.

In 859 AD, with the Tang Dynasty declining, several rebel groups are established to take down the corrupt government. The largest of these groups is the House of Flying Daggers, who, after their previous leader was captured and killed, are number one on the most wanted list.

As Captains Leo and Jin capture Mei, a blind dancer who they think might be the daughter of the killed leader of the House, they concoct a plan to break her out of prison, gain her trust and let her guide them to the House of Flying Daggers and their new leader.

The movie is first and foremost a melodrama, sprinkled here and there with wuxia fight scenes and some political plot points. Mei and Jin fall in love during their journey, and as it turns out that the entire journey was a ruse to guide the imperial army into a trap, the political plot stops there and the melodrama takes over completely. Mei turns out to be not blind, and Captain Leo a secret spy and her former lover.

However, because of the fact that both Jin and Leo tried to rape Mei at different points of the movie, the entire love triangle just feels gross. Both men’s assaults are explained away by their undying passion for the beautiful Mei, who in both instances just lies there motionless and stares into nothing. When Jin and Mei finally consummate their love, consensually, in a hilariously bad sex scene, Mei is promptly killed by Leo for falling in love with another man. In the climax of the movie the two rapists fight over Mei’s dead body.

In typical melodrama fashion, Mei also refuses to die three times or so, laboriously standing up every time and looking frail, while her would-be rapists bash each other with swords in an epic winter landscape. Eventually all three die. We don’t know what happened to the army or the rebels.

The House of Flying Daggers is a tedious melodrama and gross rape apologia, sprinkled with beautiful cinematography and grand landscapes.

16. Alita: Battle Angel (2019)

Alita: Battle Angel was directed by Robert Rodriguez and stars Rosa Salazar as Alita, Christoph Waltz as Dr. Dyson Ido, Keean Johnson as Hugo, Jennifer Connelly as Dr. Chiren, and Mahershala Ali as Vector. The movie is a live-action adaptation of the manga Battle Angel Alita by Yukito Kishiro.

In 2563, after Earth was devastated by an all-encompassing war known as “The Fall”, scientist Dyson Ido finds a cyborg head with a completely intact brain while scavenging for parts at the scrap yard. He takes the head back home and attaches it to a body, which works perfectly, as the cyborg girl wakes up soon after, demanding food. It turns out that, although her brain is fully intact, she can’t remember anything from her past, and so the good doctor names her Alita, after his dead daughter.

The movie shows a typical cyberpunk society, with a floating city called Zalem on top and Iron City, whose population almost entirely works for Zalem, at the bottom. The characters are scrappy and learn to survive quickly in the harsh environment ruled by Vector, the de facto ruler of Iron City, and his hunter-warriors, a kind of private police division. The people of the city are kept in check with a combination of fear and hope of ascension to Zalem, should they make it in the Iron Ball tournament, a huge and violent roller derby which keeps the people both entertained and placid.

Alita, therefore, has a very simple premise: get back memories and eat the rich - and this works astoundingly well. With its mesmerizing special effects and character designs, made by Wētā FX, and fast-paced story, the movie follows Alita and her boyfriend Hugo on a journey of self-discovery as well as the discovery of dark secrets at a break-neck speed. The villains are believable and pose a real palpable threat to our heroes, and the character deaths hit hard when they happen. The actors are all very good, with Rosa Salazar delivering a fantastic performance.

Alita is definitely the best anime adaptation I’ve seen so far, and although the movie ends on a cliff-hanger, it works as a stand-alone, as well.

(Still hoping for a sequel, though!)

17. Demon City Shinjuku (1988)

Demon City Shinjuku is a lesser known movie from Yoshiaki Kawajiri, the creator of Ninja Scroll and Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust.

We open at an epic sword battle between Genichirou, a master swordsman, and his friend turned rival Rebi Ra, who allowed himself to be possessed by demons to finally best his friend.

He does so, and with Genichirou’s death, he plunges the city of Shinjuku into darkness, turning it into a demonic landscape, and announces that in 10 years time, he will do this to entire world.

10 years later, it is on Genichirou’s son Kyoya to finish what his father’s started and defeat Rebi Ra once and for all.

Demon City Shinjuku definitely looks and feels like a Kawajiri movie. From the character design with its over-exaggerated blocky features, to the heavy melodrama drenched in blood and (if lucky) other bodily fluids, the movie already harkens to the auteur’s later and more known works like X. There are best friends who become enemies, damsels to be saved and sexy booby demons who want to kill you, after….

Despite the movies’ age, the animation is dynamic and fluid, and I especially liked the creative and disgusting monster designs, something we’ll also see in Kawajiri’s later work.

In spite of its very basic plot and typical eighties anime pitfalls, I enjoyed Demon City Shinjuku and would recommend it, if you’re interested in older anime.

18. Blazing Saddles (1974)

Blazing Saddles is a parody western pastiche written and directed by Mel Brooks and starring Cleavon Little as Sheriff Bart, Gene Wilder as Jim the Waco Kid and Mel Brooks as whatever he wants.

“Blazing Saddles would never be made today” said Mel Brooks in a 2017 interview with BBC Radio 4, because we’ve become “stupidly politically correct”, which is the “death of comedy”. It’s fine, old comedians say this stuff all the time, it’s their way of bowing out of the current climate, of admitting that they don’t understand the world they live in anymore.

I, for my part, have to contradict the great Mr. Brooks. Blazing Saddles can absolutely be made today with little to no adjustment. The movie is brilliantly towing the line, between offence and delight and still has a lot to say about class and race relations in America.

The racist cowboys are a farting, illiterate and easily bamboozled lot. The white townspeople and the main villain are depicted as racist caricatures, spouting the n-word left and right, while Bart and his black brethren are depicted as mostly normal people trying to survive in this stupid world.

The most poignant thing about Blazing Saddles, however, something that should be repeated more often, is that it goes out of its way to show that it’s a movie. A funny movie, with characters, sets and a director – nothing more. Because, in the end, a movie can’t show you, how to not be racist.

It can point out the stupidity behind racism, it can show you that the perceived other is as human as we are, while simultaneously pointing out racism as inhuman. But in the end it’s on us to educate and better ourselves.

Movies like Blazing Saddles could and should be made today, sans the casual homophobia of course. Because movies like these, don’t pontificate, don’t pretend to have the moral high ground, they’re just make you laugh and maybe, while you’re at it, think.

19. Plump Fiction (1997)

Plump Fiction was directed by Bob Koherr and is a parody lampooning violent nineties action movies like Natural Born Killers (Oliver Stone, 1994), Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino, 1992) and, of course, Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994).

While a parody like Blazing Saddles is still relevant to this day, despite its obvious flaws, I’m happy that movies like Plump Fiction are mostly dead by now.

The movie is an amalgam of bad takes, a total and deliberate misunderstanding of the movies it’s parodying, and a lot (a lot lot) of fat jokes.

The actors are crap, the sets are cheap and the cinematography is muddy gray and kind of gross.

Just don’t watch it. It’s coma-inducingly boring and just bad.

20. Frost/Nixon (2008)

Frost/Nixon was directed by Ron Howard and stars Michael Sheen as David Frost, Frank Langella as Richard Nixon, as well as Kevin Bacon, Rebecca Hall, Matthew McFayden and many more in an all-star cast.

The movie is a fictional retelling of a series of interviews Frost conducted with Nixon in 1977, after he stepped down due to his participation in the Watergate scandal.

I was struck by the incredibly sterile depiction of this seemingly important piece of journalistic work. While Nixon absolutely controls the narrative and is being increasingly humanized by the movie, Frost just stays the same and doesn’t seem to care much about the interviews or their political weight.

Only after Nixon drunkenly calls him in the middle of the night and delivers a barely coherent rant, Frost is spurred into action. He finally reads the reasearch his team conducted, in which he showed absolutely no interest before and delivers the last interview, which sees Nixon finally confess to his involvement in Watergate.

However, even during the confession, Nixon is portrayed as a morally righteous hero, led astray by his own strong sense of justice and devotion to his country - it’s bizarre. The last shot of the movie positions Nixon in the Californian sunset, finally in peace, while an epic Hans Zimmer soundtrack blares in the background.

Frost, on the other hand, is bid farewell by a barren text, stating Wikipedia-style facts about his career and that the interviews with Nixon were and still are the highlight of his journalistic endeavors (which is factually not true).

When I put this movie on my list, I expected a high-impact newsroom drama like She Said (Maria Schrader, 2021) or Spotlight (Tom McCarthy, 2016), however Frost/Nixon turned out to be just a really weird piece of Republican apologia, despite a stellar cast and a solid soundtrack.

21. Kill Chain (2019)

Kill Chain was directed by Ken Sanzel and stars Nic Cage as Araña, a mysterious hotel proprietor, who seems to be a magnet for all kinds of trouble.

The movie is a another direct-to-VOD Nic Cage vehicle, which sees Araña orchestrate a chain of events to kill the people who killed his best friend and his daughter.

The plot moves quickly from death to death, until we get to Araña himself, who explains everything with a self-satisfied grin and a Nic Cage-appropriate crazy glint in his eyes.

The movie really wants to be Bad Times at the El Royale (Drew Goddard, 2018) or at least a Tarantino film, with a quirky comic-book style intro sequence, as well as characters mostly having descriptive names like “The very bad woman” or “The woman in the red dress”. Unfortunately, it fails and turns out to be quite boring, instead.

Its narrative structure, while trying to be dynamic and mysterious, jumping from one death to the next, ends up feeling artificial and jarring. Meanwhile, the visuals try to match Nic Cage’s zany antics with a neon color scheme and foreboding angled cinematography, but also fail to deliver.

Speaking of Cage, the cast consists of mostly lesser-known television actors, who do a fine job, but are not given enough material to work with, with the exception of Mr. Crazy Eyes himself, who manages to hog screen time and ham it up, despite the boring story.

The plot itself is a standard revenge fantasy with an extra heaping of uncomfortable misogyny, as most of the female characters are either victims of terrible abuse, used as a catalyst to spur Araña’s plan into action, or sexualized props.

All in all, not even Nic Cage, who is fine in his role as puppet master, can save the movie from being a boring and drab mess.