Applied Philosophy

Jersey Girl, 2004, directed by Kevin Smith, starring Ben Affleik and Raquel Castro.

The Trotsky, 2009,  directed by Jacob Tierney, starring Jay Baruchel, Jessica Paré and Ricky Mabe.

The best characters in literature are those that get transformed. Shakespeare presented one of the best and moving transformations, from Prince Harry to King Henry V, in his trilogy: Henry IV Part One, Henry IV Part Two and Henry V.

Kevin Smith tried to do the same in Jersey Girl by transforming a Public Relations guy, a person who lives by lying to the general public, to a spirited and dedicated public servant, but where Shakespeare was successful Kevin Smith fails: when it was time to present the beliefs of the character through a speech Kevin Smith has nothing to say.

Smith fails to deliver a modern day St. Crispin’s Day Speech because he does not believe in public works the way Shakespeare believed in English nationalism.

In Hollywood anything could be forgiven except believing in something and the failure of Smith was the failure of conviction:

An extended cut was shown at Kevin Smith’s private film festival Vulgarthon in 2005 (and was shown again at the 2006 festival). Cut scenes that featured in the extended version included a much longer extension of the Jennifer Lopez section of the movie that fleshed out the characters more, Ben Affleck’s full speech in the city hall, a longer ending, and some music changes.

—Jersey Girl, Wikipedia [my emphasis]

Either Smith failed to write a moving speech or hesitated when it was time to deliver the final cut.

Slavoj Žižek wrote a book, On Belief, which discussed the need to believe in something to change the world, he presents Lenin, leader of the Bolsheviks, as an  example of someone acting on his belief even though Žižek personally does not agree with the beliefs. The interested reader can read the book and evalute the arguments for himself, but I like the short judgement given by Hegel: Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion (see Weekly Lesson (2)).

Jacob Tierney,another writer-director, fails to deliver a transforming character, his protagonist has passionate beliefs  from the first until the last frame of the film. Tierney does deliver the speech, the School Sucks Speech, but prefers to let a secondary character delivers it and then have him add that he doesn’t really believe in it, but he will put deeds before beliefs.

Modern artists are unable to observe society and can only express solipsist views, I suspect that Tierney hesitated to let the protagonist of his film, i.e. his avatar, express his views in a compelling speech, but by doing so he gave the best expression for the students’ “revolt” of the sixties: young students following ideas they do not really believe in without any adult leadership, except for a few fellow travellers cheering from a safe distant. This lack of belief, of passion, explains why the students used to take exams in the morning and riot in the evening; they also put deeds before beliefs and one does not sacrifice his future for deeds alone.

This lack of belief is present in every artistic expression of modern society, from the cheapest action film to the historical epic, it seems that there are no more Bolsheviks in modern Western society.

The Dark Knight, 2008, directed by Christopher Nolan, starring Christian Bale, Heath Ledger and Aaron Eckhart.

In The Illusionist vs. The Prestige I wrote the following:

Nolan’s film is just a cheap trick that only impresses small children and credulous people; this is not a surprise, his first film Following and second Memento are, also, cheap tricks, the latter more so than the former. Even Batman Begins is turned into a card trick, a three villains trick. The problem is that all these tricks are done for the sake of tricks only, no inner meaning, nothing profound.

Despite my low assessment of Nolan’s talent I went to see his latest film in cinema. A large part of my motivation was to write a post about the film, but the film was such a mess that I struggled to find even a coherent element to criticise.
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Steven Saylor’s Roma Sub Rosa series, 1991-ongoing, 10 novels & 2 short stories collections.

I own ten books by Steven Saylor all of them belong to his Roma Sub Rosa series featuring Gordianus the Finder: A private detective working in ancient Rome, and elsewhere in the Mediterranean, around the middle of the first century BC. Some are subtitled ‘A Mystery of Ancient Rome’ others as ‘A Novel of Ancient Rome’.
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Brother, directed by Takeshi Kitano, starring Takeshi Kitano and Omar Epps.

Takeshi Kitano is a Japanese filmmaker, actor, TV personality and comedian; outside of Japan he is known only through his films, his most known is HANA-BI, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1997.

There is a long tradition in Hollywood of importing talent from other countries, at one time or another directors were imported from Germany, Italy, England and The Three China’s (Mainland, Taiwan & Hong Kong); after HANA-BI’s success they wanted Japan’s latest international director, Takeshi Kitano.
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Iain Pears’s The Dream of Scipio, 2002, about hundred and sixty-five thousands words in three parts spanning 392 pages.

Three characters separated by time but connected by a single text. The first character writes the text, but only the second character is able to demonstrate the courage expressed in that text, while both the first and third fail. The narrative jumps from one story to the other with the connection only ‘understood’ at the end of the narrative.

You would be forgiven if you thought the above is about the film The Hours (2002, directed by Stephen Daldry) but actually it is about the novel The Dream of Scipio.
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John Updike’s Gertrude & Claudius, 2000, about sixty-five thousands words in three parts spanning 210 pages.

Here is a short review I shared with a couple of friends some years ago:
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Born in 1930, his books include:

* Pascali’s Island, short-listed for the 1980 Booker Prize.
* Stone Virgin (1985).
* Sacred Hunger, joint winner of the 1992 Booker Prize.
* Morality Play, short-listed for the 1995 Booker Prize.
* Losing Nelson (1999).
* The Songs of the Kings (2002).
* The Ruby in Her Navel (2006).

The three novels I read were all historical set in different areas and eras and written in different style. Below is a short review of each one:

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The Illusionist, 2006, directed by Neil Burger, starring Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti and Rufus Sewell.
The Prestige, 2006, directed by Christopher Nolan, starring Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Michael Caine and David Bowie.

Here is something I posted on an Internet forum about The Illusionist a few months ago:

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