2012.12.23 — Lullaby for Pi: Movie Review

Have you seen the small independent film Lullaby for Pi? No? Well, no surprise. This joint Canada / France production (2010) has received a rating of 6.2 from a whopping 205 raters in IMDb. But, more interestingly, a total of 0 (zero) viewer and critic reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. I found a French critic's review: Nicolas Gilli, which is on a France-based web-page and is in, no surprise, French. Nothing in the (English) Wikipedia. A Google search will bring up a couple of reviews, for example, The Hollywood Reporter's castigation that LFP is … a ludicrous romance so full of clichés and forced whimsy that it is nearly unwatchable.

Basically, this is a movie that for all intents and purposes, doesn't quite exist. I don't remember having heard anything about the movie, but came across it by accident while flipping through the movie listings on TV. And that is a shame! Okay, it hasn't gone completely unnoticed, as the tumblr people seemed to like it, and their blog is filled with images.

Synopsis: young brilliant musician goes into a deep depression with the death of his wife and stops music. Instead he spends his time in the hotel room where he first met her, waiting for her to call. A young woman, who doesn't want him to see her face and who lost several years of her youth to being in a coma, forms a friendship with him through the bathroom door. And, like magic, and with the help of the kindly chess playing hotel desk man, the two eccentric people tentatively and quirkily begin to live. He, again, she for the first time.

And it is the quirkiness that I can see being a thumbs down for some. Why? I've been struggling to articulate my thoughts, but it comes to what may be an odd split in the human population between those who delight in Magical Realism versus those who delight in cartoon violence or the un-magical realism of saccharine sentimental (happy / sad) movies. The emotional life of the characters is brought forward in the storytelling through exaggerated setting and character. So the young woman struggling to find her place in the world hides in the bathroom of the man having lost his place. Each have erected a wall between themselves and the world which, by the magic of life, is embodied in the locked bathroom door.

And thus we see a visual metaphor dance around the theme of finding/losing/rediscovering one's voice. The metaphor is re-enforced with the subplot of the young musician who has to struggle to keep his own musical voice while it is being excoriated by the good-intentioned father.

And, in the best of a magical realism typical of many Canadian writers, such as Barbara Gowdy and Margaret Atwood, the theme is explored in different ways. The young woman begins to find her voice using mute media: she uses film frames clipped from the movies she's paid by a theatre company to project and, with a kind of homage to Timothy Findley's novel Famous Last Words, journal writing on the wall of her loft that she would paint over until the day she met Sam…

This is a fun movie. The directing kept it light, and the performances by the leads are engaging and don't fall into maudlin sentimentality. Forest Whitaker as their unassuming spiritual guide was perfect in the role. The filmography is good and contributes to the story with its own subtle quirkiness. And the music is also excellent. As is noted, Charlie Winston contributes perfectly to the sound track, including Rupert Friend's extemporaneous blues/jazz 'hit' I'm in Love With a Bathroom.


★★★★☆

Director: Benoît Philippon
Actors: Andre Richards, Clémence Poésy, Colin Lawrence, Dewshane Williams, Forest Whitaker, Matt Ward, Rupert Friend, Sarah Wayne Callies


Finally, in the most peculiar and delightful of ways, LFP participated in a delicious as Pi fushigi on the day I watched the movie.

Helpless — Finished 2010.09.04

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
This is a disturbing book, one that once begun kept me turning the pages. It is very typically Gowdy, meaning that the protagonist is someone amoral who has been humanized. And that is what marks Gowdy apart from the good writer — the ability to bring to her readers a feeling of understanding, and even some empathy, for a completely unsympathetic character. It seems anti-social to think and feel that a child abductor could be human, and not just a caricature of evil. But this is the power of Gowdy's writing.


Gowdy commented that the story she wanted to explore with Helpless was the anguish of a parent whose child disappears. And on the surface the disturbing part of this book is of a mother's horror of a child being abducted by a person or persons unknown. But somehow that story did not dominate the novel. Perhaps, during the writing, the writer's challenge of the abductor's motivation and humanity took over because that part becomes the central driving element of the novel. And what makes the book as disturbing, psychologically, as it is — and it is very disturbing — is the manner of Gowdy's portrayal of the kidnapper.


In her hands the human proceeded along an insane course of action within the bounds of fully justified logic and sound reasoning. There is a disturbing, unsettling empathy that is generated by this character as he proceeds along his path not as an insane evil creature, but as a frail human who has successfully denied to himself the nature of his nature. His self-delusion allows him to perfectly rationalize his actions; within his scope of self denied understanding his motivations are truly honourable and in this psychology he echos our own failings of self understanding, honesty and/or awareness. Not that many of us have stalked and kidnapped children! But where have we, for example, not fallen victim to own self denials, to our own delusions about our motivations or sense of social propriety? Who here on the planet has not rationalized and justified small selfish behaviours as being for some kind of altruistic 'best'? Where have we chosen to live a lie because it served an end which was made to look generous but served our ego's need? When have we mislead someone around us to support us, or manipulated someone to collaborate with us to assuage our feeling of doing something amoral? And how often are we unaware of why it is we do the things we do, ignorant of what motivates us?


And so what makes this book so disturbing is that it powerfully attacks our rationalized albeit unconscious complacency with not knowing ourselves. Ron didn't know what evil lurked in his heart until he took action. Nancy, his girlfriend acquiesced to his evil because acquiescing served her unconscious needs. Thus she was able to deny the un- or quasi-conscious contrary truths. And who can know what evil lurks in the dark corners of our own hearts and souls that we have kept hidden from ourselves because we do not have the courage to explore those recesses? That is disturbing!


Many have commented that the ending felt rushed and left them unsatisfied. This I find puzzling. Well, let me rephrase. From a purely rationalistic perspective, the ending arrives before all the 't's are crossed and 'i's dotted, and with, ostensibly, too 'soft' an ending. And I can see how this gives a feeling that there hasn't been the proper closure normally associated with such a story. But psychologically, I find the ending to be nearly perfect, and even spiritual. The paedophile discovers in the sheen of the child's damp skin the mirror into his soul, into his blackest truth. And even more remarkably, he in a great act of spirituality, accepts the truth of himself, and is then able to turns himself away from his path towards seeming inevitability because he could not longer deny the truth of himself. That many dislike the ending may be because, in a typically Gowdy way, the person who had this epiphany — and he shakes in fear of seeing that face of god in his soul — is such an abhorrent character that this person's journey of self discovery through the abduction of a child, would seem to be an utter waste, from a spiritually meaningful way. Furthermore, Gowdy adds a delightful complexity to the ending with the girlfriend's own smaller epiphany. She doesn't experience an epiphany of self awareness, but, instead, chooses to see the person in front of her, without any sort of self deception or illusion, and accepts her fate as his co-kidnapper.


And this may seem strange — it was to me when it popped into my head, but as I wrote this review how the booked ended reminded of one of the toughest instructions from The I Ching:

[When] one is faced with a danger that has to be overcome...[w]eakness and impatience can do nothing. Only strong [individuals] can stand up to their fate, for [their] inner security enables [them] to endure to the end. This strength shows itself in uncompromising truthfulness [with themselves]. It is only when we have the courage to face things exactly as they are, without any sort of self deception or illusion, that a light will develop out of events by which the path to success may be recognized. This recognition must be followed by resolute and persevering action. For only [people] who go to meet [their] fate resolutely [are] equipped to deal with it adequately (Wilhelm/Baynes 25).

And this is also why this book is so disturbing: a pervert, despite some reluctance, in the end displayed the strength and courage to face himself exactly as he was, and became resolved to meet his fate. Who amongst diurnal man have had the courage to do that? To be shown up by a paedophile, now that is disturbing!

The I Ching. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967. Translated into German by Richard Wilhelm, and into English by C.F. Baynes. It has an introduction by C.G. Jung. ISBN: 069109750X. 

Helpless — Begun 2010.09.01

While waiting for my take out pizza — sicilian sausage — to be made and baked, I wandered into the library, ostensibly to look at the CD stacks. But for some reason that bored me today, and so I stumbled into the 'Staff Picks.' There I found from Barbara Gowdy, one of my favourite authors, the three year old, but new to me:

Barbara Gowdy.
Helpless. Toronto: Harper Collins Canada, 2007.
ISBN13: 9780002008464.

A quick look at the very mixed reviews in GoodReads would indicate that Gowdy has again written something ... edging into uncomfortable waters. We'll see how I like it.