The Man Wasn't Where?

As I was talking with a friend today about the perplexities and futility of life, I began to give a brief description of The Stranger, primarily focusing on the ending with the trial and Meursault's detached personality and view of life.  Getting more emotional and more confused as I attempted to depict this to my friend, he suggested I read The Myth of Sisyphus at which I chuckled and said how that was one of Camus' main points and we had already discussed its relevance to the novel.  I thought it was really amusing how my point of view seemed to blend enough with Camus' that it was suggested I read about Sisyphus.

Anyways, last week we watched The Man Who Wasn't There.  Aside from being an interesting movie in the general sense, I really did feel that Camus' "philosophy" was being projected in it.  I enjoyed the black-and-white old style film noir quality, as well as recognizing several loved actors such as Tony Shalhoub, Richard Jenkins, Christopher McDonald, and Jack McGee.

The title forces the question of which man wasn't where?  I find this to be answered by: Ed Crane was the man that no one really believed was at the scene of the death of Big Dave.  Though he tried telling the truth to help his wife, his story was just not "exciting" enough.  The darkness of the movie was evident not only in the plot, but in the cinematics such as the dark room where Big Dave tells Ed about his affair and a cigar cutter catches the light, or when the jail bars cast shadows across the face of the lawyer and around him, the dark against his light grey suit.

This brings me to something else I enjoyed -- Ed's lawyer Freddy Reiedenschneider.  Perhaps I am biased as I love Tony Shalhoub, but his enthusiasm and spirit in trying to find a logical explanation for the murder was almost contagious.  Then again, I get really into criminal investigation shows at times, and the scenes where the lawyer tried to get behind what happened were really engaging.  The first main scene with him where Ed tries to tell the truth about him committing the murder was really tense as Freddy rambles on and on about his hypotheses while Ed's wife slowly turns her head to stare at her husband when she realizes that he really did commit the murder and she is unfairly locked up, and Ed's face has a mixed look of terror and calmness.

One thing I didn't enjoy very much was the forced humor.  Yes, sometimes it was funny and fit in, but other times, the absurdity (oddness, not Camus' absurd) stuck out too much.  This included things like the whole UFO idea and most of the scenes with Birdy.  Oppositely, the ending scene where the camera pans across expressionless faces watching Ed die was very moving and enhanced the movie after the stupid UFO thing.

However, having watched countless movies with my father and brother when they always pointed out logic flaws, difficult scenes, mistakes, and the overall quality of a film, I have "inherited" a very critical point of view towards movies.  Overall, I enjoyed the movie and was also made to think about the ideas presented, though it didn't speak to me as much as the novel The Stranger itself did.

Beauty in the Caribbean

Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea is a deceptively beautiful and saddening novel.  For now, I want to focus on the beauty that is described throughout.

Beauty in this novel takes on various forms, and has different effects when narrated by Antoinette or Rochester.  It is used as a description for people on the island as well as the natural surroundings.  Antoinette's infrequent comments on beauty are usually focused around her mother when she was younger, while Rochester's images of beauty come primarily from the unfamiliar surroundings as well as Antoinette when she's older.  However, Rochester perceives both these beauties as intimidating and deceptive.

"We pulled up and looked at the hills, the mountains and the blue-green sea.  There was a soft warm wind blowing but I understood why the porter had called it a wild place.  Not only wild but menacing.  Those hills would close in on you...Everything is too much, I felt as I rode wearily after her.  Too much blue, too much purple, too much green.  the flowers too red, the mountains too high, the hills too near.  And the woman is a stranger" (63).

Just as Rochester is describing the unfamiliarity of his surroundings, he switches to thinking about Antoinette, in the passage above and below, showing how closely intertwined he has the beautiful yet intimidating nature with Antoinette.

"It was all very brightly coloured, very strange, but it meant nothing to me.  Nor did she, the girl I was to marry" (69), shortly followed by:  "She [Antoinette] was sitting on the sofa and I wondered why I had never realized how beautiful she was" (72).  After he describes nature's beauty and Antoinette's beauty, a few pages later he describes how intrigued and almost disturbed he is by her crying at night and her close relations with some blacks such as Christophine.

As I have not read Jane Eyre (just gotten a brief summary from a friend), I am curious to see what this relationship will amount to.  Will Antoinette go crazy herself?

The Meaning of Life (Is That Even Real?)

Albert Camus' The Stranger was ultimately a very thought-provoking and emotional novel.  The deep thoughts it stirs primarily in the end while Meursault prepares for his death were very dark, but were composed of very legitimate ideas and Meursault's point of view really hit home with me.

Meursault is seen to be in the same situation as Sisyphus from "The Myth of Sisyphus," where there seems to be no point to the depressing, repetitive thing known as life.  For, if there is nothing after the current life we live, what is the point of feeling, caring, getting upset, and being happy?  Ultimately, they mean nothing whatsoever.  Ten years after a day you at-the-time called the best day of your life, you won't even remember the strength of feelings you felt, and ten years after you made someone happy for a long time, they might not even give a second thought about you.

Life is absurd.  Any meaning we see in life is imposed on it by ourselves.  People choose to be happy when they see someone they like or eat their favorite kind of ice cream; they choose to allow themselves to feel sad when losing someone they cared about or something as trivial as getting a stain on their favorite shirt.  Whether a stronger "reason" such as someone dying, or as simple as being taller than they wanted, a person allows for these things to affect them, and therefore is the sole reason for allowing themselves to feel.

And then there's the question of who decides that losing a person should be more emotional than losing a pet cat?  Or that crying over a bad grade isn't as bad as having a break up?  First of all, to different people, different events have different weights -- the death of a father that was never around might not be as significant as the death of a dog that stuck with its master through thick and thin; or vice versa.  Society has imposed these sort of ideas on our lives, but they're not even uniform throughout the world.  In one country, the death of a close person might be a devastating event while in another it's just a quotidian occurrence that really means nothing anymore.  Hell, even around the same country these "ideals" aren't the same.  (It really is a bizarre thought how there can be so many wealthy, well-off, people in the same country, while there are so many people around them that struggle to feed their children.)

Meursault doesn't get very upset about the death of his mother or his imminent death because he realizes that everyone will die eventually.  Who can say that a 20 year old's death is untimely just because they didn't die from old age?  If everyone is going to die eventually and life has no overall meaning to it, why do we look for simple pleasures in life, why do we hope for things to happen in the future, especially if the majority of our hopes and dreams are never realized?  Why does society condemn a man to death essentially because he doesn't cry at his mother's funeral?  Seriously, why do other people care about the emotions of others, why do they try to impose their beliefs on others?  Why are people who are different considered "strangers" like Meursault, and a threat to society?

Unfortunately, I cannot answer these questions because I don't know my own answers to them, but also because everyone has different opinions and beliefs (and while I'm just speculating, I don't want to be offensive.)