Anti-Climacus

Adventures in Cultural Consumption:

Kafka, The Castle: Finally got around to finishing it after having been stuck on page 200 for the better part of a month. A lesser work than The Trial, though I recognize this judgment is based on the fact that The Trial is relevant for my work and interests in a way The Castle is not; the former has "In the Cathedral," one of the great text-and-interpretation moments in world literature, the latter has an endless series of bureaucratic mishaps, some of which get abandoned without resolution. Perhaps that's the point. Did enjoy the strange time compression and K.'s conversation with the secretary when he is at the point of exhaustion.

Army of Shadows: World War II movies are an interesting case. Anglo-American films often feel the need to clearly explain characters' motivations (Run Silent Run Deep, The Great Escape, Bridge on the River Kwai) because the overall narrative of the war is so familiar. French postwar film, especially Pierre Melville's, are uninterested in character development or motivation: a man just is the things he does. Whether the movie succeeds or fails depends then on whether the opacity contributes to (Le Samourai) or inhibits (Le cercle rouge) the narrative. I found much of Army of Shadows frustrating because of its opacity, excepting brief moments of narration, forced the story to do too much work when the story was clearly of a genre type (so I guess I agree with the criticism offered here). I don't know the history of the French resistance all that well, except having seen The Sorrow and the Pity many years ago, and so constantly found myself frustrated that the really interesting questions of motivation weren't being answered, much less addressed.

And yet, when Gerbier is captured for the second time, the story finds some unexpected depth, and hurtles on to the ending...