Deerhunter - Microcastle

Dear 1992,

Wow. It’s really been a long time. I bet you’re kind of surprised I’m writing to you at all—I didn’t really know you when you were around, but then, I was pretty busy. I had that gig taping explosives to toy tigers and that other one where I kept buying six soft tacos, no cheese, at taco bell. That was before they had fire sauce. It was just hot sauce then. Remember? In any case, I heard a lot about you after you took off.

1992, I liked what I heard. We really liked the same things—all those neon colors. We both loved it when hip-hop songs had scratchy sampled horns and you couldn’t stop playing those songs where long-haired young white men would just...sort of....smash on the same 3 Goddamn chords. Smash, smash, smash, they would go. Blllllaaaaannnnngggg CONfUsioN LONELYFUCK etc. Man, some of those were sweet. But you have to admit that almost all of them blew.  And their bands would be called like Hogan’s Hobos or Iguanodon or whatever. You remember those guys? They were always from the northwest or some doucher college. Remember the other kind of song those dudes loved? The kind where they’d pick one catchy undistorted guitar riff and then the singer would do weird shit over it? You didn’t like those as much, but later on they became more beloved. El Scorcho. Every other Pavement song. Right? I bet you wish you’d been more into that when it was big.

I’m writing to talk to you about this new band. They’re called Deerhunter. I think you would like them. A lot. Which is weird because, you know, they don’t know you. If they were playing music when you were around, I bet it was Greensleeves on recorder. And yet they’re making me think of you. Not really making me miss you, just making me think of you. That’s the problem. I mean, I still get down with some of those bands you liked so much. See, bands can do that. They can exist in the kind of universe that letters to 1992 exist in. The kind of universe where the only thing that matters is pulling it off. But usually they exist in the same universe that online music reviews exist. The one where just being basic competence is a tall order. That’s the universe Deerhunter lives in, and that’s the universe I’m forced to live in when I listen to their album Microcastle , which pretty much just alternates between BBBllllaaaannng BBBlllannngggg BBBBBBBLLLLLLlllaaaaaaannnNNNNGG and faux-intellectual El Scorcho. It’s like listening to My Morning Jacket, only just as pointless. Actually, is this a My Morning Jacket Album? Hold on.

No, it’s not. That’s too bad. At least they’d have some kind of a gimmick going for them. Kind of a Chris Gaines thing. Let’s wrap this up by saying all the songs are basically uninteresting and of two types: distorty and not. Twenty listens in, I can’t even tell you which tracks suck the least. Forget this album and this band.

Casablanca (2)

Casablanca is difficult to categorize because of its romance. Rather, I should say that it is difficult to categorize because of its coupling of romance and war. Today it may seem unsurprising that a work of art would combine love and war, it may even be so unsurprising that it would be considered predictable. But, in the tradition of romantic literature there is a markedly different coupling: love and death. This coupling is epitomized in Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. “What is the relationship between love and death?” is certainly the most important and most telling question to ask after seeing Tristan and Isolde. The question holds such a great deal of importance because it reveals the driving tension in nearly all romances from Shakespeare to Hemmingway. Casablanca, on the other hand, does not present that coupling: it rather couples love with life. Like Tristan and Isolde it demonstrates the struggle between duty and passion, but Casablanca does not take death as its ultimatum, it rather presents life, two lives in fact, stay and live like this or leave and live like that. But neither decision looks appealing. Thus, it is more like Anna Karenina than Pride and Prejudice.
Taking the model of Shakespeare or Austen, Casablanca does not appear to be a comedy; there is no marriage at the end. But before going further something must be said about these comparisons. Casablanca is more like Shakespeare in structure and also in theme; the comparison is relatively clear. Austen, on the other hand, is very different in both structure and theme and the difference is revealing. Austen is frequently misread as being “romantic.” Any romance in Pride and Prejudice is a redefinition of the word. There is no fatality to Elizabeth’s decision of whom she marries or whether she marries at all. The fate of Elizabeth’s relationship with Mr. Darcy will at no point fundamentally change her life; it will only make her more or less happy. Her concern with happiness is far less than her concern for the good. Thus, she will never allow for the very kind of tension on which romance is based. Elizabeth’s character is thoroughly established early on and –while she matures over the course of the book- her final decision does not dictate who she is, it rather qualifies how she will be. The situation is quite different with Rick and Ilsa. The tension of their relationship reaches its climax at the moment when they must decide whether or not to spend their lives together. Rick’s character, by contrast, will not be fully defined until he decides whether or not to leave with Ilsa:

Ilsa
You're saying this only to make me go.

Rick
I'm saying it because it's true. Inside of us we both know you belong with Victor. You're part of his work, the thing that keeps him going. If that plane leaves the ground and you're not with him, you'll never regret it.

Ilsa
No.

Rick
Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life.

Ilsa
But what about us?

Rick
We'll always have Paris. We didn't have, we'd lost it, until you came to Casablanca. We got it back last night.

Ilsa
And I said I would never leave you.

Rick
And you never will. But I've got a job to do, too. Where I'm going you can't follow. What I've got to do you can't be any part of. Ilsa, I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that. Now, now...
Here's looking at you kid.

Apparently they writers were writing the script literally during the filming of the movie, and, since it was filmed in order, they were deeply unsure about where to go in the final scene. This detail might help to explain why these lines sound so fresh even sixty-six years later; they are delivered as though the actors almost don’t understand what they are saying, as if they were surprised by their own emotions. Whether the details about the film are true or not is interesting historically. Regardless of the film’s history, the writers and actors seem to have come to a perfect understanding. Whatever Rick is thinking there is no way for him to be prepared to let her go; he might even change his mind once he gets to the airport. Such speculations lead to a single question: Who is Rick? To be blunt, he is magnanimity itself. Cool, calm and reserved, he speaks effortlessly yet thoroughly. He stands alone without any affectation. In short, he is the modern gentleman. It is his image that should be conjured up when the word “manliness” is spoken. Ilsa stands opposite him as the modern woman. They are not simply nor merely symbolic, but their symbolism reveals their natures: Rick is outwardly confident though inwardly unsure, Ilsa is outwardly emotional but inwardly maintains her dignity and does not act on a whim. Ilsa, unlike Rick, has a kind of unbridled passion, infinitely attractive but not divine, a mortal unmoved mover. She embodies what Lorca was advocating when he said “La poesia no quiere adeptos, quiere amantes.”

Casablanca (1)

I speak with the greatest sincerity and utmost gravitas when I say that I may be the most unqualified person to write a film review. I am certainly the least qualified of all my friends. I am excitable enough to blindly believe my first impressions and over-confident enough to declare them with every pretense of alacrity. I have been through high school and college and I find myself to be well - though not perfectly -“educated.” Nonetheless, in the realm of cinema I am generally worthless. Such a phenomenon is no surprise even today: I have been a terrible critic of film my whole life. As a child I spent a great deal of my summers curled up in front of the television watching and re-watching Tombstone or the Indiana Jones movies. Don’t get me wrong, these are not at all bad movies, but I was fully unaware of any characteristics by which someone else might call them praiseworthy. I watched them and many others with the most unobservant eye, but the most open heart. I watched in order to spend time being Doc Holiday or Indiana Jones. I engulfed my whole self into the characters and the action, so that I could participate in their lives alongside them. This was why I watched movies and is still why I watch them today. It is not how I read books or observe art. It is not how I listen to music. But I cannot escape my being completely overpowered by movies, time and again. But, since I entertain the image of myself as a thinking man, I cannot fully surrender my interpretations, wholly suspend my judgments when I think about movies. This is why I am so thoroughly unqualified to review movies. It also happens to be why I nonetheless feel so drawn to review them.
Thus, I approach this task with a vast and deep division inside me. I am so enamored by Casablanca that I cannot help but write about it, but I am so self-conscious about saying anything worthwhile that I can hardly know where to begin. (Before beginning I would also like to add that, being 22 years old and having never been married, the brief digression on marriage is entirely a matter of speculation and a subject of which I claim no sagacity. Any truth that I have hit upon is a blessing, however it is a happy coincidence. Nonetheless, it is a subject that I treat with the greatest sincerity and about which I have ruminated for many years.)
Casablanca, which is second behind Citizen Kane in the AFI’s “100 Greatest American Films” and immediately before The Godfather, is arguably the greatest "Hollywood" film of all time, a film that can be enjoyed academically as well as it can be entertaining. Citizen Kane is a great film, but it seems to me to be too much a film for films, too much a testament to its own legend, perhaps too vast to be limited to the genre of “film.” The Godfather (by this I mean 1 and 2, while the AFI indicates just 1; Godfather 2, the only sequel to appear on the list is at number 32) is also great but too epic, too long and deals with too many different themes to be considered a pure "Hollywood" film. Casablanca, on the other hand, is relatively short (about one hour and forty-five minutes) and its varied themes are neatly tied to the two principal themes of love and war. Few films are allowed to have such a fluid storyline, and navigate the difficult waters between eclecticism and making a point. The readability of the script (it is based on a play called Everybody Goes to Rick's) is also a testament to the permanence of its success. That it is in the realm of the greatest films of all time places it on par with other great works of art and literature, and the very tradition of great works. Why discuss whether or not Casablanca is the greatest film of all time? Does such a question seem even answerable at all, much less important? Maybe not, but I raise in an attempt to illustrate what kind of a movie Casablanca is. What kind of a movie it is seems to me to be a very deep question, one that may seem obvious but is in fact not very easy to answer.

1

To be a "conservative," one concerns himself with what simply is; he believes in unchanging principles as the basis for political action. The most enduring of those principles, in conservative thought, is self-interest.

Self-interest is the core philosophical precept of the conservative: freedom exists in opposition to tyranny (or regulation); bigger government means less freedom, higher taxes mean less freedom. But what makes a conservative a conservative is not that he loves individual freedom and sees things which stand in the way of that freedom as bad; the conservative sees tyranny and regulation (read: taxes and government) as essentially non-functional. Conservatives don't think socialism is bad; they think it doesn't work.

This is an important distinction, because it relies on the essentially conservative notion of an unchanging human nature. To say that socialism is bad is to present it as an (unjust) alternative to the life that we know and love, though an alternative nonetheless. Conservatives don't see socialism as a system which functions and produces injustice. Conservatives see socialism as non-functional since it contradicts human nature, which they understand to be universally self-interested in the same way and to the same degree.

"It is human nature," says the conservative, "to want freedom in all things. Humans yearn for freedom, universally." Modern conservatives believe that want for freedom is an unchanging fact of public life everywhere in the world. Those who support a "forward policy of freedom" see liberalism (by which I mean a love of freedom for freedom's sake) as a universal fact of human nature, held to an equal degree among all men in every culture.

In the same way, Smith's "invisible hand" guides the market economy of all things traded, universally. The "invisible hand," like the want for freedom, is a claim conservatives make about "human nature."

This term, "human nature," refers to universal precepts of existence: human nature has no time, no place, no gender, no race. Shakespeare and Hobbes and Smith are central to conservative thought because they "explore the human condition," a condition which existed before those authors wrote, and which remains unchanged today. It's not simply that conservatives make claims about what human nature is, but, more fundamentally, that there is a human nature which is common to all men and does not change.

Exploring seriously what is fact and what is custom, what is and what becomes, what can be changed and what can't is how one becomes politically nuanced. At the core of every political decision, and all decisions are political, is the question of necessity.