American Fable ~ "...The darkness drops again..."

As mentioned in Tuesday's post, more on a recent film in which Yeats' poem The Second Coming is recited in full.

There's American Beauty, American Graffiti, American Hustle, American Gigolo, American Gothic....and on, and on.... many more. 2016 delivered American Fable, written and directed by Anne Hamilton- it's her feature film debut. Ms Hamilton had studied philosophy and law before turning to her first love - film. She acquired internship with Terrence Malick on the set of The Tree of Life, and as was quite likely to happen, some of that director's technique embedded itself into Ms Hamilton's new-minted style. I'd categorise it as pleasantly arty-farty but still accessible on several levels.

American Fable - the "fable" part of the film's title has to be highly significant, so should be kept in mind while watching the story unfold. A fable = a short story conveying a moral, message or lesson, same kind of thing as a parable or allegory, often containing supernatural or mythical elements. This tale is set in Wisconsin farming country in the early 1980s, when farmers in the United States were confronted by an economic crisis more severe than any since the Great Depression. Many of those who relied on agriculture for their livelihoods faced financial ruin. The epicenter of the downturn was the Midwest.

The film's story is told from the perspective of "Gitty" (short for Gertrude), 11-year old daughter of farmer Abe and wife Sarah, young sister of Martin (an absolute psychotic monster of an elder brother if ever I saw one!) The performance of Peyton Kennedy, 13 year old actress playing the part of Gitty, is something to behold - and worth seeing the film for that alone. She's in almost every scene, and carries the weight as effortlessly and as skillfully as any seasoned actor or actress.

Getting down to brass tacks, as my grandmother used to say: (spoilers ahead) Gitty's father's farm is in deep, financial trouble, many neighbouring farms have already failed, land has been bought up by developers, rumours of suicides become common, any remaining farmers are desperate, trying to hold on to their legacy, and their way of life. As a way of fighting back, and with the help of a shadowy female character, Vera, about whom I'm still puzzled, Gitty's father has managed to trap, and hold captive in an old crumbling silo on the farm property, an official (CEO?) of a huge agribusiness development company. We suppose that the intention was to use hoped for ransom money to save their farm...though quite how this could work out wasn't clear to me! Never mind, this is a fable, with a message.

The captive guy, Jonathan, is played by lovely Richard Schiff (who, for husband and I, will forever be known as "Toby from The West Wing"). Scenes between Jonathan and Gitty are some of the best in the movie in my opinion. It is in one of these scenes that Jonathan reads William Butler Yeats' poem, The Second Coming [see Tuesday's post] to Gitty from one of the pile of library books she has brought for him - to assist in his escape rather than for literary reasons.

The main arty-fartiness in American Fable, comes from many dreamy, mystical shots and sequences, also in some colour coding, a particular colour is associated with each character. For me, the colour thing, discovered only after having seen the film, seemed a wee bit superfluous, not to mention pretentious. Who has sufficient immediate insight to be watching a movie for colour coding?

There's a trailer HERE - but I don't see it as a good representation of the movie.

Without giving any more of the plot's detail away, I'll move quickly on to try to define this modern fable's moral message/lesson - nutshell-wise, as I perceived it:

The ages-old right versus wrong, good versus evil contest has shades of grey rather than being a sharp, clean black and white affair. Who, in this fable, is good; who has a good side and a bad side; who is bad, simply out of necessity, and who is downright evil out of no necessity at all? Perceiving the differences in these fictional characters, in these fictional circumstances, should assist us, in real life, to see the grey shades more clearly.

Others could well perceive the film, and its fable's lesson differently, it is left largely up to the viewer to decide. A brief review of the film in USA Today included that: The timing of its release, within weeks of Trump's inauguration as the 45th president, makes it all the more prescient, given its look at the hardscrabble Rust Belt. From the same piece:

No, we aren't revisiting the jolting results of last month's presidential election, in which Donald Trump successfully railed against the elitist culture and punched a ticket to the White House. Many have hailed his ascent as redemption for the forgotten American, the Rust Belt.

But a generation ago, in 1982, the situation was eerily similar: Ronald Reagan had been ushered into the presidency in 1980 through the overwhelming support of what Richard Nixon famously coined the Silent Majority. But his populist message also had a downside.

"Yet, we still have to choose what kinds of people we will be and what we will fight for — without certainty," Hamilton says. "American Fable is about a girl making that choice, and it's a very difficult one. Even she gets blood on her hands."

"...Vexed to Nightmare..."

Irish poet William Butler Yeats was born on 13 June, in 1865. His natal chart and brief biography are at astro.com. William painted in words - his father, John Butler Yeats, was an artist in the more traditional sense.

Rather than concentrate on the story of W.B. Yeats, his life and loves, a ponder upon one of his poems:

The Second Coming. This is a poem containing several memorable phrases which tend to pop up here and there, in quotation marks, in the work of other writers, so evocative have they become. Today's ponderings were first made some three years past, in 2014. Since then I've noticed Yeat's poem coming up more and more frequently in writings on the internet, and in TV shows and, as it happens, it was quoted in full in a movie* we watched at the weekend, and about which I shall scribble in my next post.

The Second Coming was written in 1919, published in 1920. The title could imply a Christian theme, but Yeats was a mystic and occultist, not particularly impressed by organised religion, including Christianity. The poem goes deeper.

When Yeats wrote The Second Coming the world in general was in a state of shock in the aftermath of The Great War (1914-1918). His own, Irish world, was in the throes of upheaval as Irish revolutionaries, many of whom he counted as friends and/or lovers, attempted to rid Ireland of centuries of British rule. Those facts indicate the poet's state of mind and emotions as he wrote. This poem, though, can be enjoyed like a painting from which each viewer draws a slightly different meaning, or like some modern song lyrics which, on the surface, seem nonsensical, but from which each listener is able to find their own meaning.

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The gyre, at the heart of this poem refers to something those keen on astrology's principles understand well - cycles - here further expanded to the form of an ever-widening sprial.


The gyre reaches a point wide enough that a symbolic falcon flies beyond control of its keeper and becomes destabilised. Astrology's 2,100-year Ages fit the gyre imagery, I think.

Yeats had lived through the opening of the 20th century - 2,000 years from the birth of Christ - and speculated that a new "coming", or awakening, or major change of some kind, was to be expected, though not an exact repeat of the last one. I understand that Yeats' book A Vision details his beliefs in this direction.

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold": each generation might see a different reference there. Things going too far....too much excess, too much progress, too much control, too much technology, more and more until..... "mere anarchy" emerges (the word 'mere' is used here in its ancient meaning of pure and unadulterated).

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." We can all relate those words to something familiar today, to apathetic and passive citizens as against the overly intense on both sides of the political divide.

The second part of the poem proceeds to speculate "what next then?" The poet has a vision of what seemed like the Sphinx in the desert, birds wheeling overhead, but representing what? Life as it was lived before Christ - a pagan world? Then darkness fell as Christianity emerged to bring about change? 2,000 years on Yeats expected another "coming", some as yet unknown event or "beast" to emerge and change things yet again, as Christ's coming had changed things last time around.

The "slouching" imagery indicates to me a slow, murky advance with no glorious overtures. I can easily identify that something coming, advancing slowly, while the best of us lack all conviction, and the worst are full of passionate intensity; something which will, inevitably, change things for us all.

See? Time, even since 2014 ponderings, has given the poem a potential newer meaning, something which Yeats could never have envisioned in detail. An original meaning is still there, but exists a little further back on the loop of that ever-widening gyre. As the gyre continues to widen, scenes will further change.

Regarding that *movie I mentioned - more in next post.

Arty Farty Friday ~ Wm. Butler Yeats ~ The Second Coming

Irish poet William Butler Yeats was born this day,
13 June, in 1865. His natal chart and brief biography are at astro.com. William painted in words - his father, John Butler Yeats, was an artist in the more traditional sense.

Rather than concentrate on the story of W.B. Yeats, his life and loves, I'll ponder upon one of his poems. This is a poem containing several memorable phrases which tend to pop up here and there, in quotation marks, in the work of other writers, so evocative have they become.

The poem: The Second Coming, written in 1919, published in 1920. The title could imply a Christian theme, but Yeats was a mystic and occultist, not particularly impressed by organised religion, including Christianity. The poem goes deeper.

When Yeats wrote The Second Coming the world in general was in a state of shock in the aftermath of The Great War (1914-1918). His own, Irish world, was in the throes of upheaval as Irish revolutionaries, many of whom he counted as friends and/or lovers, attempted to rid Ireland of centuries of British rule. Those facts indicate the poet's state of mind and emotions as he wrote. This poem, though, can be enjoyed like a painting from which each viewer draws a slightly different meaning, or like some modern song lyrics which, on the surface, seem nonsensical, but from which each listener is able to find their own meaning.

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The gyre, at the heart of this poem refers to something those keen on astrology's principles understand well - cycles - here further expanded to the form of an ever-widening sprial. The gyre reaches a point wide enough that a symbolic falcon flies beyond control of its keeper and becomes destabilised. Astrology's 2,100-year Ages fit the gyre imagery, I think.

Yeats had lived through the opening of the 20th century - 2,000 years from the birth of Christ - and speculated that a new "coming", or awakening, or major change of some kind, was to be expected, though not an exact repeat of the last one. I understand that Yeats' book A Vision details his beliefs in this direction.

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold": each generation might see a different reference there. Things going too far....too much excess, too much progress, too much control, too much technology, more and more until..... "mere anarchy" emerges (the word 'mere' is used here in its ancient meaning of pure and unadulterated).

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." We can all relate those words to something familiar today, to apathetic and passive citizens as against the overly intense on both sides of the political divide, for instance.

The second part of the poem proceeds to speculate "what next then?" The poet has a vision of what seems like the Sphinx in the desert, birds wheeling overhead, but representing what? Life as it was lived before Christ - a pagan world? Then darkness fell as Christianity emerged to bring about change? 2,000 years on Yeats expected another "coming", some as yet unknown event or "beast" to emerge and change things yet again, as Christ's coming had changed things last time around.

The "slouching" imagery indicates to me a slow, murky advance with no glorious overtures. I can easily identify that something coming, advancing slowly, while the best of us lack all conviction, and the worst are full of passionate intensity; something which will, inevitably, change things for us all.

See? Time has given the poem a potential new meaning, something which Yeats could not have envisioned in detail. An original meaning is still there, but exists a little further back on the loop of that ever-widening gyre. As the gyre continues to widen still further, scenes change.