Film: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Film:  The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 1920

            This silent film was a great success throughout the world!  Considered one of the first horror films, this silent movie depicted the first expressionist view along with its skewed and jagged expressionist stage sets and somber lighting to portray and reflect subjectivity of dread. Moreover, this film was the first to introduce what professor Murdaco interpreted as “framing device” or framing story in which the plot is told by the main character as a flashback - this technique has been adopted from this film and used throughout the century by other directors in the film industry.

            I chose the scene towards the ending of the movie when Francis reveals that his flashback story is indeed his fantasy while Jane, Cesare and he are all patients of the insane asylum.  After proclaiming that he isn’t insane, Francis violently attacks the director of the institution screaming that the director is in fact Dr. Caligari.  Francis is then led away to his solitary room in a straitjacket.

           Yes! I chose the twist ending of the plot in consideration of what most Germans and Europeans may have experienced post World War I.  Throughout the early 1900 leading to the First World War, it was evident that most countries and its people had been foreboding imminent struggles and perhaps war.  I chose this twist ending in the hopes of possibly showing a comparison to what may have been promised by these countries to its people going into this cataclysmic war versus what was proclaimed at the end of the tragic war.  Feelings of dread comes over me as I try to imagine and empathize with the pre and post war situation of the people during this time period – I’m sure all those people got a twist ending from World War I and appreciated the twist ending expressionist view of this film as well.

Reflections - Siddhartha

The novel Siddhartha is inspirational especially depicting ones attempt at self-discovery during the time of the Buddha, a spiritual leader, referenced in the book as Gotama.

Here’s a brief summary: The story occurs in ancient India.  Siddhartha, the protagonist, leaves his Brahmin home and his father who was no longer able to satisfy Siddhartha’s quest for enlightenment. Along with his friend and follower Govinda, Siddhartha joined the Samanas, who taught Siddhartha that deprivation and giving up of all possessions lead to enlightenment.  Govinda soon joins Gotama to learn his teachings, but Siddhartha rejected Gotama’s teachings.  However, Siddhartha praised Gotama of his power of self-wisdom and self-experience and ventures anew to find himself, to know himself, to find Siddhartha.  Siddhartha makes acquaintance with Kamala who becomes Siddhartha’s teacher of sensuality and of love.  Through Kamala, Siddhartha also learns business from Kamaswami, the merchant who teaches Siddhartha.  He soon finds himself indulging in what he called “childlike” people’s behavior, womanizing and gambling until one day he plunges to self-destruction.  He ultimately gathers enough inner strength to find the early teachings he had grown up with as Brahmin as well as an ascetic Samana and finds another chance meeting with the enlightened ferryman Vasudeva.  Siddhartha decides to live with Vasudeva in the presence of the river that inspires him spiritually.  Some years later, Siddhartha meets Kamala, born again Buddhist, and his son on their way to see Gotama on his deathbed.  Tragically, Kamala dies from a venomous snakebite and Siddhartha attempts to raise his son but realizes much as how he himself was as a young boy, his son ran away to find his own path.  Siddhartha while listening to the river with Vasudeva realizes that time is but an illusion and that all of his feelings, experiences, and even the suffering and deprivation are part of something bigger which ultimately is connected in a cycle of unity surrounded by nature.  Vasudeva stated it’s his time, and that his work is done then departed into the forest.  Towards the end of his life, Govinda travels to Siddhartha upon hearing about a wise perhaps enlightened ferryman.  Govinda initially did not recognize for the 2^nd time his childhood friend Siddhartha.  Govinda then asks the now elderly Siddhartha to relate his wisdom. 

The passage I’d like to discuss is actually the last chapter titled Govinda where Siddhartha replies that every true statement has an opposite one that also may be true; that language and the concept of time people adhere to as fixed belief does not account for the wholeness of truth.  He continues to further state the oneness and how all things are connected through cyclic unity of nature. 

Govinda said: "Still, oh Siddhartha, you love a bit to mock people, as it seems to me. I believe in you and know that you haven't followed a teacher. But haven't you found something by yourself, though you've found no teachings, you still found certain thoughts, certain insights, which are your own and which help you to live? If you would like to tell me some of these, you would delight my heart."

Quoth Siddhartha: "I've had thoughts, yes, and insight, again and again. Sometimes, for an hour or for an entire day, I have felt knowledge in me, as one would feel life in one's heart. There have been many thoughts, but it would be hard for me to convey them to you. Look, my dear Govinda, this is one of my thoughts, which I have found: wisdom cannot be passed on. Wisdom which a wise man tries to pass on to someone always sounds like foolishness."

"Are you kidding?" asked Govinda.

"I'm not kidding. I'm telling you what I've found. Knowledge can be conveyed, but not wisdom. It can be found, it can be lived, it is possible to be carried by it, miracles can be performed with it, but it cannot be expressed in words and taught. This was what I, even as a young man, sometimes suspected, what has driven me away from the teachers. I have found a thought, Govinda, which you'll again regard as a joke or foolishness, but which is my best thought. It says: The opposite of every truth is just as true! That's like this: any truth can only be expressed and put into words when it is one-sided. Everything is one-sided which can be thought with thoughts and said with words, it's all one-sided, all just one half, all lacks completeness, roundness, oneness. When the exalted Gotama spoke in his teachings of the world, he had to divide it into Sansara and Nirvana, into deception and truth, into suffering and salvation. It cannot be done differently, there is no other way for him who wants to teach. But the world itself, what exists around us and inside of us, is never one-sided. A person or an act is never entirely Sansara or entirely Nirvana, a person is never entirely holy or entirely sinful. It does really seem like this, because we are subject to deception, as if time was something real. Time is not real, Govinda, I have experienced this often and often again. And if time is not real, then the gap which seems to be between the world and the eternity, between suffering and blissfulness, between evil and good, is also a deception."

  I agree with Siddhartha’s enlightenment and wisdom he related to simply identify and love the world in its completeness – murderer can be categorized as evil incarnate, yet the murderer may yet love, cherish, and a benefactor to his or her children.  Priests in the news, a holy man commits adultery or child molestation – a good man at the same time a sinful man; nothing is entirely good or bad, “entirely Sansara or entirely Nirvana”.

"This too," spoke Siddhartha, "I do not care very much about. Let the things be illusions or not, after all I would then also be an illusion, and thus they are always like me. This is what makes them so dear and worthy of veneration for me: they are like me. Therefore, I can love them. And this is now a teaching you will laugh about: love, oh Govinda, seems to me to be the most important thing of all. To thoroughly understand the world, to explain it, to despise it, may be the thing great thinkers do. But I'm only interested in being able to love the world, not to despise it, not to hate it and me, to be able to look upon it and me and all beings with love and admiration and great respect."

"This I understand," spoke Govinda. "But this very thing was discovered by the exalted one to be a deception. He commands benevolence, clemency, sympathy, tolerance, but not love; he forbade us to tie our heart in love to earthly things."

"I know it," said Siddhartha; his smile shone golden. "I know it, Govinda. And behold, with this we are right in the middle of the thicket of opinions, in the dispute about words. For I cannot deny, my words of love are in a contradiction, a seeming contradiction with Gotama's words. For this very reason, I distrust in words so much, for I know, this contradiction is a deception. I know that I am in agreement with Gotama. How should he not know love, he, who has discovered all elements of human existence in their transitoriness, in their meaninglessness, and yet loved people thus much, to use a long, laborious life only to help them, to teach them! Even with him, even with your great teacher, I prefer the thing over the words, place more importance on his acts and life than on his speeches, more on the gestures of his hand than his opinions. Not in his speech, not in his thoughts, I see his greatness, only in his actions, in his life."

Food for your thoughts; Govinda stated that the exalted one “commands benevolence, clemency, sympathy, tolerance, but not love; he forbade us to tie our heart in love to earthly things.”  Permit me to be a bit subjective; despite his acclaimed status Gotama, Buddha was born and raised as royalty, a prince until he witnessed few deaths and questioned the cycle of birth life and death at the age of 29.  I can’t begin to ponder what deprivation and suffrage he knew growing up as a prince.  Further, in search for answers to his question about life and death as well as to attain his enlightenment, he abandoned his family and his children but preached as one of his first commandments to respect and love your parents and elders.  I cannot comprehend to accept that if you want to achieve something monumental, you cannot show or believe in empathy – as long as you don’t preach empathy, I assume it is easy to abandon and move on with your goals whether your goals are selfish or selfless.  One more thing I want to add is that I agree with language and words losing its meaning or its wholesomeness in translation; there are not enough words to express certain emotions and instincts, you can only convey.

Dada Munch

“Dada”!  Supposedly a word without meaning, a nonsense word but all in the same instant the word has different meaning in various countries.  For instance, dada means hobbyhorse in French and goodbye in German; further, it means you are correct in Romanian.  (Dada Manifesto)

In all seriousness, personally this is the first time having come across the word dada and Dadaism.  Previous art history classes that I have partaken have not ventured into details to call it Dadaism – I came across it as simply as modern art.

“How does one achieve eternal bliss? By saying dada. How does one become famous? By saying dada. With a noble gesture and delicate propriety. Till one goes crazy. Till one loses consciousness. How can one get rid of everything that smack of journalism, worms, everything nice and right, blinkered, moralistic, europeanized, enervated? By saying dada. Dada is the world soul, dada is the pawnshop. Dada is the world's best lily-milk soap. Dada Mr. Rubiner, dada Mr. Korrodi. Dada Mr. Anastasius Lilienstein.”  (Dada Manifesto)

            With its sing-songy almost rhyming ending of this paragraph as well as Ball’s constant continuation of “dada m’dada” whatever that means, was this guy mentally ill?  Perhaps high on drugs?  It sounds terribly more like schizophrenic ranting on the surface.  Although it’s rather kind of silly I can sort of “get the gist” of his emotions and what he wanted to convey.  Reject the social norms and order and be liberated, just say dada and forget, accept, just be whatever it is you want to be and feel at any given time.  Or maybe I’m just over-thinking it.  And who are those people that he mentioned?  Or is it just another of his play on words such as “Fuschgang” instead of Wolfgang. . .

However, the following passage I have to agree with, especially since I experienced such questions when I was a child and to my surprise, having a similar conversation with my own daughters one day when they were younger.

“Each thing has its word, but the word has become a thing by itself. Why shouldn't I find it? Why can't a tree be called Pluplusch, and Pluplubasch when it has been raining?”  (Dada Manifesto)

            Say for instance, an orange.  We associate it with a fruit, or a color perhaps, but the word orange itself is now a thing through association.  You don’t know the inner monolog I’m having as I’m writing this - I feel as though I’m getting a headache discussing this, but anyhow, one day my daughters and I were having apples in which they’ve asked, “why is an apple called an apple and not a cookie?”  The only way of interpreting to my kids were to use an association of a certain colored and shaped object, a thing, that someone at one point in history called it an apple.  I sometimes still linger on contemplating how even everyday words came to be and mean.

            In essence though, the word dada whether or not a nonsense word has now taken on a meaning and thereby relates existence and is associated as another “thing”, in which I feel that it negates the nihilistic approach – it’s to me an oxymoron; say dada to anything and everything but now dada means something. Does that make sense?  I beseech your comments, your own ranting if you please. . . or simply vent your opinion.

The expressionist artist I chose to reflect upon is Edvard Munch.  He was born in Norway on December, 1863.  Edvard Munch is best known for his painting “The Scream” a/k/a “The Cry”.  His later works did not inspire much praise as did “The Scream”.  Death of his mother in 1870 was the beginning of his familial tragedies; his sister died of tuberculosis like his mother, his other sister spent most of her life in an asylum, and his only brother passed away at the age of 30.  He began his education studying engineering, but a year later, he sought his true passion, art.  His career as an artist flourished during his time in France, although in his later years, he drank profusely, heard voices, suffered from partial paralysis and even checked himself into a sanitarium where he regained some mental consciousness and drank less heavily.  He died at his country home in Norway in 1944 leaving his greatest work “The Scream” to be sold in 2012 for $119 million. (Bio)

The Scream.  1893

Due to similarities of using dark as well as light but vivid colors and wavy brush strokes, I often confuse The Scream with Van Gogh’s Starry Night.  Using oil, tempera and pastel on cardboard, Munch created four versions of The Scream.  (The Scream)

Filled with reddish crimson sky, the painting shows an indistinguishable figure holding with both hands the sides of the face with a shocked “O” as if frozen in a silent scream. Two figures are seen ambulating away from the main figure in the center who is frozen in a silent scream.  Additionally, there is couple of boats or rafts seen in the distant “light” part of the sea surrounded by darker bluish black tumultuous looking water which leads to what looks like a fierce waterfall.

The crimson sky in my opinion portrays catastrophic event which may unfold leaving much darkness and despair portrayed by the bluish black waters. This dark water is surrounding the smaller light portion which in my opinion represents the good or the “rafts” of life that few may cling on to.  The figure frozen in silent scream to me is more in shocked horror; it seems to express being alone and frightened, friends and family broken apart or drifting away lost – standing amidst a bridge do I go on? Can I go on? Or do I end it.  The bridge portrays to me a question of existence; to be and continue across or cease to exist and end falling off.  Dreary.

Melancholy.  1891

This painting was achieved with oil on canvas.  With surrealistic grayish yellowy perhaps even feeling of golden twilight sky which is reflected on the surface of the water along the beach gives a sense of gloom.  Following the shoreline, I focused on the melancholy man sitting cupping his chin. There appears to be boats along the shore on its sides and in the distance there is a couple standing on a small dock.  There is a boat afloat by the dock.  Amidst what appears to be distant forest of green which is painted darker for perspective, past the green pasture stands what looks like a barn, a farm house, or a church.

Melancholy, the painting, portrays exactly what it is titled.  The man sitting cupping his chin looking focused on something, perhaps nothing with his mind wandering in deep thoughts appears melancholy, sad, maybe even experiencing feeling of longing.  His facial expression is captured exquisitely; I could sense the sadness.  Perhaps it’s sadness of losing a loved one to another – the couple seen in the distance; the figures in black and white appear to me perhaps they’ve just wedded in the church painted white nearby.  Perhaps the melancholy man is longing for the past and the couple portrayed is actually himself in the past with his loved one.  He had lost his love, and the boats nearby that are on their sides may be portraying the insecurity of the melancholy man versus the stable, safely floating boat which is actually representing his love, his mate, his anchor.  And with her gone, he is contemplating life passing him by from present to past while revisiting the very place that held his fondest memory while perhaps sadly rejecting his life just watching life as it passes him by.

The Dance of Life.  1899

This painting of oil on canvas is vibrant with light and dark colors.  There are male and female figures, some as couples, dancing along a garden near a beach with a background of the ocean, the horizon and a bright setting sun shining on the surface of the water.  On the foreground however, there are single females on left dressed in white, and the one on the right wearing a black dress.  The girl on the left looks young.  She has what appears to be a smile with a white floral dress.  At the center, there is a couple dancing with eyes closed.  The woman in the center is dressed in red who is dancing with a man dressed in black.  With sharper rigid strokes, the older woman painted on the right wearing a black dress looks on with envy perhaps jealously at the couple in the center.

           Life isn’t a dance so what is this painting trying to convey?  My first thought was that this was a party and all people depicted in the painting were elated about something and having a ball.  However, the somber jealous look of the old woman on the right side of the painting caught my attention and I followed her gaze to the couple dancing serenely with their eyes closed in the center of the painting.  Munch uses concept of depth and time in his paintings; I realized the young girl portrayed in a white dress all over the canvas is possibly the same one in different time periods.                           The setting sun beaming reflection on the water surface in the shape of a cup portraying vibrant young woman begins the story of this painting.  The young woman is shown in different times of being courted by other men.  Until finally the young woman is painted and introduced on the left foreground portraying youthful innocence and beauty.  Then in the center, the same young woman who seemed to have matured showing sexuality since she is dressed in red is in the arms of a man who she possibly chosen as her mate.  They have their eyes closed and they appear to be content.  Then on the right side of the painting the young woman who is now old and left alone looks on longingly maybe with bitterness at herself in the past.  She has danced her life through different courtships to maturing and finding her love to losing her love; she started alone vibrant and ended alone old and bitter. The dance of "her" life; stages of her life of purity, carnal love to death?