Review of the film Louder Than A Bomb

            Disclosure: I was there during the years prior to the filming of this documentary. I remember these kids and I even remember parts of their amazing spoken word poems after years. This movie touched me in a way that people who were not present there would never understand. But I’m sure it does wonders for those individuals as well. You can’t help but be affected by the sincerity, verve and talent.

            The film is called Louder Than A Bomb, named for the explosive annual teen poetry slam that takes place in Chicago. The competition was co-founded by an amazing non-profit organization, Young Chicago Authors, which teaches and promotes creative writing and literature throughout the city and surrounding areas. High school aged youths recite personally written poems to audiences of their peers as well as judges. The judges give them scores, and teams and individuals win, yes, but it’s the poem not the points that stay with you long after the slam is finished.

            Directors Greg Jacobs and Jon Siskel document the months, weeks and days leading up to the annual competition by focusing on a few enigmatic and diverse handful of participants in 2008. This angle doesn’t lessen one’s understanding of the beauty of the slam; it serves to deepen that understanding. Nova, Nate, Adam and the Steinmenauts slam team are not rosily lit, tentative, one-dimensional young adults. This is a documentary. Most of the television shows and films that feature teen life are written by those with a heavy nostalgia for that period of their lives. They don’t see with the eyes of those who are living it at this moment. These teens are living it; they are living it and shouting about it to audiences who clap and cheer for the realism of their language and expressions. Part of the wonder of the Louder Than A Bomb slam is the audience, full of other teens who appreciate the cadence of a phrase, the unexpected rhyme of a line, the brave effort to speak exactly what you know exactly how it feels to you.

            I recall snatches and pieces of verse all these years later. I volunteered with Young Chicago Authors for a few years after I moved to Chicago in late 2004. I’ve lived here since that year, and this film is the most distinctly Chicago film that I’ve ever seen. It’s because of the words and faces and love of creativity that spills from the projector onto the screen and beyond. It’s true diversity I see there. And the true acceptance that flows from the young people who fill the audience at the competition, listening and responding to the poems being performed. It’s because those poems take me places I’ve never been with a clarity that I could never get anywhere else. Louder Than A Bomb reflects the best that society has to offer. It’s in the stringing together of thoughts and words and gestures into something that has the power to move and inspire. Listen to the poem.

Review of the film Melancholia

Where will you go when the world ends? Who will you be with? And will you look away? Or will you face the end, open your arms and embrace it?

The film Melancholia begins with long, gorgeous strains of the theme from Wagner's Tristan & Isolde and long, drawn out and beautiful shots of scenes that may have never happened. These scenes lead us to understand that another, larger planet is spinning it's way through the darkness towards Earth. Will the two enormous objects collide? In the reality of Director Lars Von Trier, it seems apparent what the answer is to this question.

There is a wedding party inside a sumptuous mansion, lavish and exorbitant, something beyond what the majority of us will ever experience.  The party seems to go on for hours as Justine (Kirsten Dunst), the bride, attempts to smile and bow to her guests and family. But there is a heaviness to her movements and expressions; they come a step too slowly and are a bit stilted. It becomes evident that, despite the beautiful and sympathetic husband, the sudden grand promotion from her boss, the perfection of the festivities and those attending, Justine is not well. And it all comes from within. Her mind is not well.

There are sensations of feeling that cannot be fully understood by those who have ever experienced them. It's to move as if underwater, attempting to walk through the depths of the ocean, fighting the weightlessness, parting the wall of liquid with your hands and shoving, ripping through. Or perhaps, it is like earthy vines wrapping around your wrists, ankles and waist as you attempt to move forward, their grip and gravity pulling you back and down like the heaviest burdens. The world does exist to those under this spell. But it is so overwhelmingly tiresome living in it. Food holds no comfort, companions do not speak an understandable language, rituals offer no easing of tension. Sleep is the only welcome respite.

 Justine lives for these moments, where unconsciousness and dreams offer something beyond everyday existence. It’s a wonder that, with the patterns of her behavior, that she is as tolerated as she is. Those around her quickly come to their boiling points as she languishes in her depression.

But then that new planet draws nearer, so that its coming can be seen in the daylight sky. And Justine suddenly feels lighter, freer, with the end of life closing in on every one of Earth’s inhabitants. Her dark view of the world is becoming true right above her head. And she is soothed that she was always right.

Melancholia is deeply autobiographical for its director. Von Trier has suffered from sometimes crippling depression and anxiety all his life. The film is beautifully executed and the actors, particularly Dunst, inhabit their characters well. She is utterly convincing as someone weighted with a deeply ill mind. But I wonder what Justine’s story would be if she were not of such privileged stuff. How different would she be if she inhabited a lower rung of society? I see Justine in these elements and I do find her tale believable. However, as I watched this film, I speculated about those other 7 billion stories that Von Trier did not tell in his film. In the end, though, they all came to the same fate, it seems.

Will you realize that the end of the world is what you have been waiting for your whole life?