Sunday Movie Roundup (3/19/2017)

Quintus Curtius Film , , ,

The Wall (Die Wand) (2012)

Director:  Julian Pölsler

This is an intriguing, mysterious, and unnerving meditation on loneliness and alienation.  An art-house film that may not be to everyone’s liking, this top-notch drama features fantastic choreography and views of the Austrian Alps, as well as a great performance by Martina Gedeck.  The plot:  a woman visiting some friends in the Alps suddenly discovers that she is cut off from the rest of the world.  And when I say “cut off,” I mean literally cut off.  There is some kind of deflection barrier or “force field” that encases the area around her cottage from which there is no escape.

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The Memory Of Benefits, And The Forgetting Of Offenses

Quintus Curtius Thought , ,

Some weeks ago I sought to make contact with two old friends I had known in the early 1990s.  I had not spoken to either one since about 1993.  This kind of thing is always an uncertain proposition, as you can never really be sure how a person has changed over the years.  Sometimes you may find that the person has little enthusiasm for reconnecting; in some cases old friends may have changed beyond all recognition.  But in spite of this I was not deterred:  my experiences in doing this sort of thing have always been very good.

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Fixed Fortifications Are Useless

Quintus Curtius History , , ,

Armies and states throughout history have sought to provide security by constructing fixed fortifications like fortresses, citadels, and walls.  These projects inevitably end as dismal failures.  Not only do they not provide security, but they do something even worse:  they provide an illusion of security that encourages a defender to be overconfident and careless.  And when this happens, disaster is only a matter of time.  Walls and forts do not provide security; at most they can help channel avenues of approach for advancing enemies.  For states are not protected by fortresses, but by the valor of their citizens.  When the latter is lacking, the former are of no use.

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The Rise Of The “Plutocratic Insurgency”

Quintus Curtius Podcast , ,

I’ve written before on the extreme social dangers that come about from excessive concentrations of wealth in the hands of a few.  An important series of articles by Robert and Pamela Bunker in Small Wars Journal has taken this idea one step further:  they have identified the current vast income disparities as a form of insurgency warfare. This is a very significant step, and one that is supported by the facts.  This condition–in all its forms–they call the plutocratic insurgency.  This podcast discusses some of their conclusions, and asks readers to ponder the implications of this insidious form of warfare on the social health of Western nations.

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The Hedonistic Philosophy Of Yang Zhu

Quintus Curtius Literature, Thought , ,

It is an unhappy fate for a philosopher to be known to posterity only through his enemies.  Quotes may be taken out of context, writings may be warped or obfuscated, and conclusions may be cherry-picked to present a picture far out of accord from the writer’s original intention.  We do not know if this is precisely the fate of the Chinese philosopher Yang Zhu (440-360 B.C.), but one suspects that if more of his writings had come down to us, we might have a more favorable view of his doctrines.  But we have what we have, and this does not exactly inspire man’s noblest sentiments.  Or does it?  Each reader will have to judge for himself.  It would be wrong to ignore him, even if we disagree with his doctrines.

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The Life Of Father António Vieira

Quintus Curtius Biography, History , ,

One of the most compelling figures of Portuguese history–and surely one of the greatest practitioners of its prose–was Father António Vieira, a Jesuit missionary, orator, statesman, writer, and mystic.  His career illustrates that stimulating mixture of conservative and progressive thinking that would come to characterize the Jesuit order throughout much of its history.  He was born in Lisbon in 1608 and moved to Brazil (what is now the state of Bahia) in 1614 when his father received an appointment for a government post there.

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The Wisdom Of Mercy From Ibn Hazm Al-Zahiri

Quintus Curtius History, Thought , ,

mercy3

We turn now to those founts of wisdom who have lessons to teach us.  Abu Muhammad Ali Ibn Ahmad Ibn Sa’id Ibn Hazm (أبو محمد علي بن احمد بن سعيد بن حزم) is known to history as Ibn Hazm Al-Zahiri.  Born in Cordoba, Andalusia (Spain) in 994, he achieved enduring fame for his incredible intellectual achievements in a number of disciplines, including jurisprudence, theology, philosophy, and poetry.  He even composed a manual on love known as The Ring of the Dove (طوق الحمامة).  Here was a man of substance, a man who could appreciate the virtues of the passions as well as those of the mind.

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The Lizzie Borden Murders

Quintus Curtius History , ,

borden

Writing recently about the O.J. Simpson murders has rekindled an interest in another infamous American crime story, one that is not as well-known to modern readers.  The Lizzie Borden axe murders of 1892 were in their day somewhat comparable to the Simpson case:  both trials were highly publicized, the jury’s perceptions were skewed by preconceptions about race and gender, and–most importantly–in both cases the killers got away scot-free.  The equivalence is not absolute, however.  If the murders in the Simpson case were crimes of passion, the Borden killings were all about profit.  It is this fact, perhaps, that makes the Lizzie Borden story even more chilling and despicable than the Simpson case.

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There’s Nothing Shameful In Having Problems (Podcast)

Quintus Curtius Film, Podcast , ,

guitar

I recently saw the 2004 documentary Metallica: Some Kind Of Monster.  The film shows the group trying to keep itself together in the wake of band tension, personal issues, and creative deadlock. How these problems are confronted and solved make this a film very much worth watching. We discuss some of the lessons learned.

There is nothing wrong or shameful in having problems.  The measure of a man is how he confronts and handles those problems.

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