The
Film Critic
Christian Langworthy
He
knows watercolors fade fast.
In going to the bijou to study movement in film,
he recalls a river from his
youth. This river distills movement.
But this
criticism is incorrect.
The film is a natural history- the river fictional.
He
is led to believe that swimming can be fatalistic.
His
assumption:
that a river in motion can be troubling. The argument of a drowned
man is that the river lacks movement, that it is
Stagnant
almost, while blanching his body.
Nothing can be further from the truth.
There
is always the film to contend with in every way except directly.
Some
rivers are motionless-
others are not.
drowned man is not the result of his
environment.
Following the method of Magritte-
A drowned man dries up,
evaporates
into the atmosphere, then comes down as rain, his body in bits and pieces.
Watercolors
can be fatalistic.
This is the manifesto he has drawn day by day in his untidy
room.
Chagall would visit,
but the vacuum is broken.
Cleanliness
is an aversion to hell.
Indirectly, these events are not
related, but who is to judge?
A shift in the moment causes extreme paranoia.
The irrational is part of a logical process.
All interiors
are cinematic.
Some interiors may be non-existent.
Content may involve exteriors,
but no exterior can exist.
The cinema offers the lunatic
many solutions which otherwise could be misconstrued
as fantasy in a world
of reels and cinematic effects.
Hence, the following:
The film is Prague.
Credits roll
over vase and flowers.
(Charon makes an appearance in
a motorboat.
He is hardly disguised. It
is a misguided effort.)
(The train lunges its dark, metallic
fist into the night.
A mist descends.
Wir haben hier keinen Morgen.
One is led
to believe there is a river.
One almost smells it.
A
piano is heard rustling
In the fading tree line.
Arias. Minuets.)
Some justification can made for the lighting.
(A
man approaches with an aposteriori remark.) "Paradigms
are the structural basis for all film."
The watercolor
fades frame by frame.
Vase and flower remain under a lithographic poster on
which is printed:
Marriage
Be Merciful
Circumstance presents him with innumerable choices.
If in
the choosing, we (I am with him now) succumb to whimsy,
Then let us not depart from the world Without an alternative to fatalistic
delusion.
The wild beast must be tamed,
Slaughtered
and cannabalised as if he were human.
Only then may we
assert we are truly carnivorous.
Dark
lighting precedes Genesis.
The priest is irreverent standing next to Rousseau. Someone
thinks less of him each year.
© 2002 Christian Langworthy
Christian
Langworthy's early poems appeared in a national award winning chapbook of
poems entitled The Geography of War and in anthologies such as: From
Both Sides Now, Watermark, Premonitions, Poetry Nation,
and Asian American Poetry. His work will also appear in the forthcoming
anthologies: In The Mix, Bold Words, Asian American Literature
Anthology, Risen From East, and Vietnamese American Literature 1975-2000.
Christian's new poems appear in the literary journals Fence, Mudfish,
and Can We Have Our Ball Back? He is also writing a novel, excerpts of
which have been published in forums such as PBS American Experience, Salon.com,
and Manoa.
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