Last Days

As you may recall, last fall Muriel had some health problems last fall after she contracted an infection in one of her eyes. Needless to say, it was a pretty difficult time for me, and back then I didn’t know if she would make it. Once I saw her condition, I knew I would have to get it taken out, but because of the pain she stopped eating almost completely, and I ended up having to take her to the veterinary hospital to get them to make her eat again. My most vivid memory of this was from the drive to the hospital. I drove with one hand on the wheel and the other petting Muriel in her box, and again and again I did my best to reassure her. I’ve always been the sort of person to talk to animals as if they could understand, and before we entered the hospital, I looked down at her and said, “I’m going to make sure you’re not in pain anymore. No matter what, I don’t want you to hurt.”

While I waited for the doctors to finish working on Muriel, I reconciled myself to the idea that she might not survive her illness. I even said “goodbye” to her before they took her back to the examination area, just in case. So when she started to eat again, putting back on enough weight that she could have the infected eye removed, I was naturally grateful. As you already know, she survived that surgery as well. After she recovered from the illness and became her ornery self again, we started joking around the house that she was indestructible.

Of course, this wasn’t true. Guinea pigs are small and fairly fragile creatures, and their life span averages roughly four years. When she fell ill again last weekend, it had been a little over four years since I first brought her home, and she had lived to a fairly good age for her species. And because guinea pigs are so delicate, I didn’t want to run the risk of putting her under the knife again. After all, we had fought off death together once already, and I didn’t want to risk tempting fate again. So instead, I decided to spend one last night with my Muriel, cradling her to my chest as I gave her water from her bottle. If I was really going to have to say goodbye, I wanted to do it at home, surrounded by the family (human and canine alike) who had grown to love her these past four years. And when she passed away in her sleep that night, I thought that was just about the best she could have gone, much better than I feared would happen when she was sick last year.

Goodbye, Muriel. Thank you for being part of my life.

R.I.P. Victoria

When I brought Muriel home on Halloween 2006, it was because I needed a furry companion in my life. By contrast, I brought Victoria home so that Muriel would have a friend of her own. When I bought Victoria, I imagined that she and Muriel would get along swimmingly, chasing each other playfully around their shared cage and snuggling up next to each other when it time to sleep, which would essentially double the adorability factor of one of nature’s most adorable sights, a sleeping guinea pig. Well, that didn’t happen. From the beginning, the two new “friends” didn’t get along. I couldn’t put them together for more than a minute or so before some kind of dust-up would begin. As it turns out, this was because Victoria had her own friends that she brought with her- including the late Charlotte- to be born a month or so later.

Likewise, it took Victoria longer to get used to living with me. At the pet store, she was a sweetheart, even falling asleep in my hand while I held her. But after I brought her home, she became restless. She would take hours to fall asleep at night, and eventually I had to start putting a towel on top of her cage to help her fall asleep and turn on a fan so her late-night activity wouldn’t keep me awake. Also, there were a few instances when I was holding her that she actually jumped out of my hands and tried to run away. More than once I had to (carefully, of course) move around all my furniture in order to find her.

But eventually, she settled down. Having babies helped, I think. And once she did, I was better able to appreciate Victoria in terms of her own personality rather than as a would-be accessory for Muriel. It’s funny how guinea pigs, which seem to be little more than fur, squeak, and appetite, can fit so much personality into those tiny bodies. While Muriel was bright-eyed and ornery and Charlotte was curious, Victoria was always warm and affectionate. Of the three, Victoria was the one who enjoyed being held the most. Sometimes I would prop her front paws up on my finger and raise up her front end so that I could rub her belly, which was her favorite spot. Other times, I would simply lie her down on my chest and cradle her. Unlike Muriel and Charlotte, she wouldn’t try to jump off or poke her nose about, but simply relax in my hands.

Victoria and Charlotte were an inseparable team until Charlotte passed away earlier this year. But after Charlotte died, I began to notice Victoria open herself up more to the world. While she had previously been skittish around our dogs, she became more comfortable with them. And she even seemed to warm up to Muriel. I even began to notice her chomping on the bars of her cage when she was hungry, just like Muriel does.

Alas, that’s part of the past now, since Victoria passed on over the weekend. I buried her yesterday in our backyard under a tree, right next to her baby. It’s strange to think that a year ago I had three guinea pigs, and now I only have the one, and that one only has one eye. For the time being, I think that rather than buying a new guinea pig to replace the ones I’ve lost, I’ll content myself with Muriel. I have plenty of others to love in my life now, of both the human and furry variety. But as Angela eloquently put it, Victoria and Charlotte were there when I needed them, and for that I’ll always be grateful.

In Memoriam: Charlotte

Out of my three guinea pigs, Charlotte was the only one who was born under my roof. Consequently, she was the only one whose birthday I knew for certain- March 9, 2007. I remember clearly the day she was born. It was a Friday night, the end of a long work week, and I came home that night with the idea of catching a late movie. I even remember that the movie was The Lives of Others- strange, the way some movie lovers associate movies with particular events, innit? Anyway, after having a bite to eat and feeding Muriel and Victoria, I decided to take a quick nap before the movie. An hour or so later, I woke up to discover that Victoria wasn’t alone in her cage.

At first, I thought her new roommates were mice- they were roughly the size of domesticated mice. But no, these rodents didn’t have any tails. Then it hit me- Victoria had babies. After thoroughly inspecting Muriel to be sure she wasn’t concealing something, I discerned that Victoria had come home from the store with a few, shall we say, bonus features. This would certainly explain the hostility that Muriel had toward Victoria- after all, she was throwing off all kinds of hormones from the time I’d brought her home. What really sticks out in my mind about that day is that I hadn’t heard a thing. Sure, I was taking a nap, but Victoria’s cage was right next to my bed, and you’d think that a guinea pig giving birth might make some noise. Nope, at least not loud enough to wake me up.

I spoke with a local pet rescue group about getting the babies adopted, and while they told me they’d be happy to take them off my hands, I would have to keep them for at least a month so that Victoria could nurse them. As these little creatures grew, so did their personalities, and I became attached to all three even before I was able to discern their sexes. This, by the way, was how I came up with Charlotte’s name- for a while I thought all three of the babies were female, and being the pompous humanities major I am, I decided to name them after the Brontë sisters. Eventually, I discovered that Anne was Andy, but Charlotte’s name stuck all the same.

But I digress. The three little piggies grew and flourished under their mother’s watchful eye, and although my original plan was to give all three of them away, I soon decided it best to hold on to one, partly because I couldn’t bear to part with them, but also because I thought Victoria would want some company. After some thought, I settled upon the idea of keeping Charlotte. One reason for this was for the sake of adoption- most adopters prefer their guinea pigs with smooth, silky fur, and although both Emily and Anne/Andy had straight fur (presumably like their absent father), Charlotte got her kinkier coat from her mother. Fearing that this could keep her from finding a good home, I decided to keep her for myself.

But beyond that, of the three little ones, I had grown closest to Charlotte. More than the others, she had developed a charming and sweet personality, mixed with a degree of animal intelligence that the others didn’t have. This sweetness comes through most clearly for me on the day I had to say goodbye to the others- after leaving them with the rescue group, I returned home to find Charlotte searching all over her cage, trying to find her now-absent siblings and playmates. It would have been adorable if not for how sad it was. I made sure to comfort her (and Victoria as well) that night, but I could tell she missed them, and I did too. Just because it had to be done didn’t make it easy.

I can’t say whether Charlotte forgot about her siblings over time, but she and Victoria remained a team from that point forward. I kept the two of them in the same cage, and while they had the occasional conflict (as mothers and daughters are prone to do), it was also apparent that they were close and cared about each other a great deal. Whenever it was time to eat, they would wait patiently near the opening of the cage, and at bedtime they’d snuggle up next to each other before going to sleep.

I always felt a little guilty whenever I would intrude on this closeness, but Charlotte and I nonetheless enjoyed a good relationship. Of my three girls, she was the most reluctant to be handled (possibly because she never had to live at the pet store), but she always enjoyed being seated on my chest. Every guinea pig has a spot where she especially enjoys people petting her, and Charlotte’s was just above her hind legs. Whenever I would pet her there, she would let out a long, pleasurable purr, which was enough to provide a little warmth for my heart.

As you may already be aware, Saturday night I discovered that Charlotte has passed away. But I’d rather not think of her lying there, lifeless, in her cage, or of the fact that she wasn’t even three years old (guinea pigs have an average lifespan of 5 to 6 years). No, I want to remember her as she lived- sweet, well-behaved, but also full of life and curiosity. I want to remember how she was the only one of my girls who would sit still when getting her nails trimmed. Or how she absolutely hated baths. Or the way she would defer to Victoria when I filled up their pellet food, but couldn’t restrain herself when it was time for lettuce. Or her adorable squeak- not as loud as Victoria’s or as insistent as Muriel’s, but just as attention-grabbing in its way. Or, yes, the day she discovered that her brother and sister had gone away.

Somewhere, someday, I hope she finds them again.

Muriels Addendum #1: Gone, But Not Forgotten

Yesterday, we recognized Heath Ledger as our choice for the Best Supporting Performance by a Male in 2008. And while Ledger’s turn as the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight was easily our favorite in this category- by a rather decisive margin, I might add- we also thought it appropriate to pay tribute to the entire career of this talented actor, who was taken from us far too soon. Sadly, Ledger wasn’t the only Muriels contender who passed away during the last calendar year. So, with help from my Muriels partner in crime Steven Carlson, I thought it only fair to devote some space to a handful of other late greats who got a little Muriels love from the voters- three very different performers who may be gone, but will now live forever in the cinema.

Ann Savage, 1921-2008


It's about having presence. Ann Savage was 86 when My Winnipeg was filming. She hadn't appeared in a film since Fire with Fire twenty years prior. Yet from the first shot, from her repeated fiery intonation of, "Was it the boy on the track team or the man with the tire iron?" it's clear why the ever-nostalgic, ever-hindward-facing Guy Maddin chose her to play his surrogate mother in his latest docu-fantastic slice of madness.

What he couldn't have known for sure at the time is that the role would be her last, yet it seems a fitting epitaph. My Winnipeg is among other things a film about the secret lives of things, about unseen influences and the effects of forces beyond our control. Chief among these influences is "Guy Maddin's" mother. For such a role, to do so much with a small slice of screentime, you'd need an actress with forceful, unshakeable presence. Enter Ann Savage, aged but still possessed of a violent temperament. The carnal, castigating brutality of her signature role in Detour (another Muriel voter once exclaimed, "Her performance makes you feel like you just had really rough sex"), with time, evolved into an ice-cold imperiousness even stronger than a Manitoba winter.

Infirm yet iron-willed, her face held in a near-perpetual haughty sneer, Savage is thoroughly convincing as the kind of woman who could tear you apart with naught but a glance, the kind of woman who could inflict the kind of Freudian psychosis that drives Maddin's films. The iconography is obvious and deliberate, and it's to Savage's and Maddin's credit that she successfully plays to her most famed type while also stepping just enough to the side of it so that the whole thing works as a typically Maddin-esque exercise in joyous, fevered deconstruction - finding the truth of things through artifice and ruin.

To that end, there's also fleeting glimpses of tenderness or vulnerability to round out the picture; when she starts a relationship with Maddin's "brother," or when she flails about helplessly in her bed as her beleagured children undertake a cruel act of revenge, the caricature suddenly becomes briefly, honestly human. She's believable as the kind of sneering tyrant who would drive a man to suicide every day for fifty years and just as believable as the kind of woman who could talk - nay, demand - the same man back off that ledge. The film may not be about Savage, but she possesses it. Her ghost haunts it. What a way to go. ~ S.C.

Guillaume Depardieu, 1971-2008

By any indication, Guillaume Depardieu didn't have the easiest life. It's one thing to have a troubled relationship with your father; it's entirely another for him to be one of France's most famous and iconic actors and to have him publicly disown you in a major publication. Lots of people get into motorcycle accidents, but not all of them have a leg voluntarily amputated in the wake of said accident. His was a life marked by equal parts bad luck and bad temper, with his death from pneumonia at the age of 37 marking an especially nasty example of the former.

His death strikes me as untimely not only for his relative youthfulness but for the trajectory his career was taking at the time of his passing. Things were falling into place. He was moving out of his father's formidable shadow, and much of that can be attributed to his exemplary work in Jacques Rivette's The Duchess of Langeais. If it is the artist's job to transmute pain into beauty, if one must suffer for one's work, then what we have here is a master class in the art of sublimation. Depardieu, as war hero Armand, shows us a man who is a seething cauldron of violent emotion locked in a battle of wills with a woman he can never actually have, yet the roil of his desires stays just concealed by his noble, "proper" exterior.

So Depardieu's temper gets channeled into repressed frustration, the threat of an explosion that never comes (even after a midnight abduction of Jeanne Balibar, playing the titular character). His permanent limp becomes an expression of agonized longing, with his every move bearing the pain of a love that circumstances and society will not allow. The love turns to sly gamesmanship, the gamesmanship turns to rage, the rage turns to hatred, the hatred finally becomes grief. What we're watching is practically an exorcism. His steely gaze betrays nothing and gives away everything. Without moving a muscle, Depardieu is tearing himself open. Who is to say where he could have gone from here. Sometimes fate is stupid. ~ S.C.

Fred Knittle, 1925-2009

Stephen Walker’s Young @ Heart isn’t a particularly distinguished documentary. But damn if it didn’t work on me like a charm. You might say that I was primed for it- my grandfather had passed away only a few months before (on the eve of last year’s Muriels), and it had yet to really hit me emotionally.. Additionally, I was in a crucial early stage of my relationship with Angela, which no doubt left my heart somewhat tenderized, albeit in a very good way. Because of these factors, I’m not sure I trust my initial reactions to the film, especially considering how annoyed I was in retrospect by Walker’s use of MTV-style music videos starring his senior citizen-aged subjects.

But amidst it all, there’s still one transcendent scene- Fred Knittle’s rendition of Coldplay’s "Fix You," backed by the rest of the group. More than any other scene I saw this year, this simple, straightforward musical number struck me as the perfect marriage of content and context. The knowledge of the number’s significance not just for Fred but for his fellow Young @ Heart performers goes a long way toward explaining why it works so well. In particular, there’s the idea that the song was originally intended to be a duet with another beloved member of the group, Bob Salvini, who passed away only weeks before the song’s first public performance. In light of the then-recent deaths of Bob and several other Young @ Heart-ers, the lyrics of the song take on an added poignance, especially when he sings of "when you lose someone that you can’t replace."

Not being a Coldplay fan myself, I found myself surprised how much more affecting "Fix You" was when sung by a deep-voiced octogenarian. Could it be that whereas when Chris Martin sings the song it comes off like a fairly standard sensitive ballad, in Fred’s hands it actually sounds like it’s backed up by a lifetime of pain, loss, and regret? In short, Coldplay may have performed it first, but from here on out, it’s Fred who owns the song. To his credit, Walker stays out of the way of the scene, content to behold while Fred and the group weave their spell. As Fred sits, bone-weary, in a chair onstage, the lyrics punctuated by the noise of his respirator, the scene works a rare magic that had me bawling like a baby, one of the few movies in recent years that has gotten me choked up. And even on subsequent viewings, it’s still extremely affecting.

Fred Knittle passed away on New Year’s Day 2009, at the age of 83. Young @ Heart was his only big-screen appearance, but it was more than enough to make a big impression. Farewell Fred, and may lights guide you home. ~ P.C.

R.I.P.: Elvis and Groucho

Thirty years ago today, the great Groucho Marx shuffled off this mortal coil, just three days after Elvis Presley died. I believe there is no better way to commemorate the passing of these two giants than this (warning: NSFW):



You are both sorely missed, although, it must be said, not necessarily by the same people.

*sigh*

When I first learned of Ingmar Bergman's death Monday morning, the news hit me like a hammer blow. Bergman, a director I've revered since I started getting serious about movies, was no more. I loved his films, but more than that I loved that Bergman existed, and now he was gone. I realize how clichéd this sounds, but I felt like I'd lost an old friend. If I haven't yet posted my thoughts on his death, it's because I wanted to celebrate his life by paying tribute to one of the greatest scenes from one of his greatest films in this week's Movie Moment.

Antonioni, on the other hand, wasn't a filmmaker I felt especially close to. He was certainly a master director, but while I've enjoyed and even loved his films I've never considered myself a huge fan. But all the same, his passing is a huge loss for cinema. Not only was he one of the greats, but he (along with Bergman, Fellini, and the French New Wave) was a key figure of the first golden age of cinephilia in America, back in the 1960s. Films like L'Avventura and Blowup were seminal works for this generation of film lovers, emblematic of the spirit of the age. Hell, the guy was name-dropped in Hair, fer chrissakes. His death, as much as Bergman's, is another nail in the sixties' coffin.

It's impossible to talk about Antonioni's genius without acknowledging that nobody could end a film like him. Watching these on YouTube out of the context of the film can't possibly compare to the real thing, but a lot of the awesomeness comes through nonetheless. Some of my favorites:

The slow "impossible" tracking shot in The Passenger,



The poetic montage of the city streets in L'Eclisse (here set to Prokoviev for some reason),



The mimed game of air-tennis in Blowup,



And finally- speaking of blowing up- the jaw-dropping finale to Zabriskie Point.



Too many cinematic masters are gone, and too few are stepping up to replace them. Farewell, Ingmar and Michelangelo.

Hurts so bad, it gets me down, down, down...

R.I.P. Robert Altman.

I've long considered Altman one of my favorites, although as prolific and uneven as he's been there have been a number of clunkers in the mix. But even the least of his works (READY TO WEAR, QUINTET) are pure Altman, and as such hold more interest than most of the movies out there. If the goal of any real artist re-create the world in his image, Altman was truly one of the greats, since there was never mistaking any of his films for the work of anyone else. Though there has been a rash of ensemble dramas on the Hollywood and indie scene in the past decade or so, none has quite measured up to the best of Altman (P.T. Anderson, the master's assistant on his final film, A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION, has probably come closest).

Out of America's currently-active filmmakers, who has made as many great or near-great works as Altman? Scorsese, perhaps. I'd argue for DePalma as well, but I'd almost surely be in the minority. And unlike Scorsese, Altman never resorted to a "one-for-me-one-for-them" career path. His films, for better or worse, were always his, which was all the more amazing considering the amount of leeway he'd give his actors. More than just the quality of his work or the freshness of his style, it was this maverick sensibility that made Altman a hero of mine.

One essential facet of this sensibility was Altman's insistence on making films for adults. Let's not forget how Altman deliberately inserted a handful of "fucks" into GOSFORD PARK just to keep kids from seeing it. POPEYE notwithstanding, the films of Robert Altman tend to evince a world-weariness that is at odds with the eternal adolescence of most Hollywood releases. It's for this reason that I took some time in warming to Altman's work as a budding filmgoer- I could respect what the guy was doing when I was younger, but it wasn't until I began to identify with, say, the lyrics of Annie Ross' "Prisoner of Life" in SHORT CUTS that I could begin to appreciate Altman's work as I was supposed to.

My favorite Altman? Hate to follow the party line, but NASHVILLE is still the work of his that's closest to my heart. Maybe it's because it was the first of his films to really bowl me over, or because it's the closest the past half-century has come to producing the Great American Film, but much as I love his body of work, NASHVILLE remains on top. But why should one have to choose just one? MCCABE & MRS. MILLER is also in my top 100, and SHORT CUTS and TANNER '88 are flat-out masterpieces as well.

Other Altman titles to grace my yearly lists include: MASH, THE LONG GOODBYE, CALIFORNIA SPLIT, 3 WOMEN, A WEDDING, SECRET HONOR, THE PLAYER, GOSFORD PARK, and THE COMPANY. And even in his second-tier work, there's still plenty to love- the great opening credits sequence in BREWSTER MCCLOUD featuring Margaret Hamilton, the sweet courtship between Paul Dooley and Marta Heflin in A PERFECT COUPLE, the cutting contest in KANSAS CITY, and the sweet sister act of Streep and Tomlin in PRAIRIE HOME, which was proof positive than even near the end, Altman was still in full control of his art.

Today, I'm reminded of an old Hollywood anecdote about another great director's passing. At their colleague and fellow emigré's funeral, Billy Wilder solemnly intoned, "no more Lubitsch." To which William Wyler responded, "worse than that- no more Lubitsch films." I never knew Robert Altman as a man, but I knew his work, and as a result I was about to see the world through his eyes, if only for a few hours at a time.

Funeral tango

Last week my aunt Nancy passed away. I've been lucky in my life not to have had to attend too many funerals, but ever since we found out that Nancy had cancer a year or so ago, we knew this day would come. Yet it didn't affect me the way it did others, mainly because I never knew her all that well. When I was little, I'd see her at Christmas and Thanksgiving, and at the grandparents' birthdays, but that was about it. And when I did see her, she was always very quiet, listening intently to others but rarely saying much. So it came as a surprise today during the memorial service to hear that those who were closest to her remember her as being lively and passionate, especially about politics. And I thought, somewhat annoyed, "where was this Aunt Nancy? I would've liked to have known her."

Nancy was my aunt on my dad's side, through marriage to my uncle Tom. This side of the family has never been all the close-knit, perhaps because there are so many of them (my dad's one of seven, and there are a whole mess of grandkids too) and they're fairly dispersed. So while my parents and I keep in contact with everyone on that side, we only see a few of them with any regularity, and Nancy and Tom weren't one of these few. By the time I went off to college, I rarely attended family functions, mostly due to other commitments and the feeling I got that missing them wouldn't be that big a deal (plus my grandmother has a whole mess of cats, and I'm allergic). But now I wonder if maybe I should have made more time for this side of the family- whereas some people relate better to kids (my grandpa is great with kids, but has a harder time with adults), others are more interesting when you've grown up. I think that Nancy fit into the latter group, and now it's too late for me to get to know her.

I attended today's service and expressed my condolences to her loved ones. They were taking it pretty well under the circumstances, and I'm grateful I haven't yet had to deal with a loss like this. Still, the whole occasion gave me pause, since as I hardly knew Nancy, I hardly felt a sense of loss. And this seemed wrong to me. I realize that we can't go around mourning everyone who passes away, but she was family, and she was never enough a part of my life for me to miss her now that she's gone. I felt a little out of place, truth be told. I suppose I'm lucky, that I'm far enough removed from the loss that I can be philosophical about it, and that my thoughts may yet spur me to connect on a more significant level with my family before I lose them too. I do know this- if I ever lose someone who's truly close, I fear that it will hit me hard.