![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
On vanishing and Peckinpah
Sep. 25th, 2006 06:44 pmSorry to vanish for a little bit. School starts tomorrow at 9:30 sharp and I've been running around doing all the things I should have been doing during this break, heh.
I've just skimmed my Sanskrit textbook. It looks like it's a (relatively) new approach that doesn't assume you're a linguist. It also looks like it takes an entire year of study to master the complexities of the grammar. (Excuse me while I panic: holy hell.) They do have you speak it, though. Sanskrit isn't a "living" language as it's not used in conversation by any people, but it's not a "dead" language in that it's still spoken in several spiritual traditions (Buddhism included).
No one can do Peckinpah.
I'm watching a movie compared to Peckinpah, and it isn't. It's just gratuitous violence. The film maker enjoyed the violence, made it gory for no apparent reason.
Pekinpah's never gratitous.
You see, underneath the violence in Peckinpah is honesty. He never lets you forget for one moment that war is cruel, and brutal, and senseless, and unfair. Bravery exists, but it exists in spite of violence, not because of it.
Peckinpah takes your illusions about heroism and throws them away as he grabs the back of your head and shoves your face into reality. In Cross of Iron, as the hero bravely returns to battle, Peckinpah doesn't give you glory -- the camera instead zooms in on a body flattened into the dirt as their vehicle rolls over it. And stays there. After each gun battle in The Wild Bunch the action stops for a series of funerals. There's a cost to the violence, and mourning.
A Buddhist friend of mine thought Peckinpah was very compassionate, and I agree. I respect someone who tells me the truth.
I've just skimmed my Sanskrit textbook. It looks like it's a (relatively) new approach that doesn't assume you're a linguist. It also looks like it takes an entire year of study to master the complexities of the grammar. (Excuse me while I panic: holy hell.) They do have you speak it, though. Sanskrit isn't a "living" language as it's not used in conversation by any people, but it's not a "dead" language in that it's still spoken in several spiritual traditions (Buddhism included).
No one can do Peckinpah.
I'm watching a movie compared to Peckinpah, and it isn't. It's just gratuitous violence. The film maker enjoyed the violence, made it gory for no apparent reason.
Pekinpah's never gratitous.
You see, underneath the violence in Peckinpah is honesty. He never lets you forget for one moment that war is cruel, and brutal, and senseless, and unfair. Bravery exists, but it exists in spite of violence, not because of it.
Peckinpah takes your illusions about heroism and throws them away as he grabs the back of your head and shoves your face into reality. In Cross of Iron, as the hero bravely returns to battle, Peckinpah doesn't give you glory -- the camera instead zooms in on a body flattened into the dirt as their vehicle rolls over it. And stays there. After each gun battle in The Wild Bunch the action stops for a series of funerals. There's a cost to the violence, and mourning.
A Buddhist friend of mine thought Peckinpah was very compassionate, and I agree. I respect someone who tells me the truth.
