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Since my last blog, I’ve seen some pretty good movies. Maybe even one or two great ones. Few warrant returning to the topic of my last blog, which was psychedelic fiction, better than David Lynch’s Lost Highway. I first was introduced to Lynch my senior year of high school, but Lost Highway was a new viewing. The film, as I read it at least, is the story of a man who is plagued by insecurity around his wife, kills her (or at least goes to jail for it), and then attempts to rationalize his feelings of perverse disgust towards sex by altering his life story. Lynch, as always, is dealing with good and evil at war in the subconscious, but this particular film has a horrifying atmosphere that persists throughout the entire runtime. Other films of his certainly contain horrifying moments, but the persistent atmosphere, not just of dread but of actual horror, was as throughout as I’ve ever experienced. In my entry on Letterboxd I quipped that it was “Probably the best possible movie about OJ Simpson.”
Another movie brought to mind Lynch and PKD’s inscrutable personal beliefs: Pain & Gain, directed by Michael Bay, starring Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne Johnson. I was probably first introduced to Bay through his Transformers movies, although it certainly wasn’t because it was my choice to watch them. I suspect that by now I’ve seen most of the majority of the Bay-directed Transformer films on TV or in some similarly noncommittal format. My interest in Pain came after hearing about the true story, a story about 3 Florida men whose pursuit of the American Dream led 12 of their peers to sit through the longest criminal trial in Miami-Dade County history and then take 14 minutes to sentence them to death. Despite the fact that the perpetrators and immediate families of the victims are still around, Bay directed this over-the-top, campy, and violent crime film with an angle that has often been called misanthropic. I suspect though that the true feeling is not misanthropy, but what exactly he does feel is best intuited by watching the movie for yourself.
One weekend recently I double-featured two from John Carpenter: Assault on Precinct 13 and Prince of Darkness. The latter was right up my alley, blending science, religion, philosophy, and throwing it against the unknown or the possibility of evil itself. Aside from the subject matter, I was awestruck by what an impressive director John Carpenter is. Lighting, blocking, editing, and cinematography come together to form images much more beautiful than your standard horror. Not only beautiful, Carpenter’s films are above all atmospheric. Still standing by my disinterest in the firstHalloween film, it is impossible to deny the autumn atmosphere that pervades from beginning to end.
A Complete Unknown is one of two or three movies I’ve seen in theatres where I was absolutely absorbed in the world of the film the entire time, and I’ve yet to see it a second time to figure out if the movie was actually any good or if I was simply dumbstruck by Dylan. He is a one-of-a kind artist, and it was fantastic to see his work represented so well. Shots? Editing? Lighting? Costumes? All the parts of filmmaking that I've learned through sheer time spent watching movies to develop a sense of preference or taste are out the window here. I am not even capable of commenting on the performances, so well do the familiar faces (Chalamet and Norton) slip into character and stay there. Bob Dylan is one of the greatest artists we've ever had the privilege to enjoy, and even if Mangold's film doesn't contain a lick of historical fact it is still true to the person of Dylan.
Instead of a litany of short sci-fi novels, I’ve recently been working my way through David Foster Wallace’s epic comedy Infinite Jest. The novel is one of the longest I’ve ever read, and progress has been slow as I reach just over the halfway point of the novel (not including the hundred-plus pages of notes and errata, the reading of which encourages the use of two bookmarks). It’s not a novel I can recommend easily, but it is certainly the funniest book I’ve ever read and shaping up to be one of the best.
Bradfield Ross is a McConnell Scholar in the class of 2026. He is studying philosophy and political science.