[For their spring issue, Calvin College's "journal of commentary and the arts" asked to publish salient excerpts of my diary recording my trip to New York City over Spring Break, during which I took in as many movies as was humanly possible in a week. Instead of subjecting you to the piece in its entirety, I will reprint here only the entries pertaining to the films seen. Please note that these hardly resemble proper reviews, as my entries are wholly informal and impressionistic. Still, word must get out about good films, in whatever form. ]

I spent my first two spring vacations at Calvin in service and Christian contemplation on Student Volunteer Service projects, but this year I wanted to devote my break to hedonism. Florida sounded entirely banal; in fact, anywhere with sun seemed too conventional. Why not buck convention and avoid nature entirely? So I toyed with the oxymoronic idea of an urban vacation. After having lived in or wandered around places like Istanbul, Minneapolis, Paris, Tokyo, New Orleans, London, and Ankara, I developed a distinct taste for urban life. Yet one city remained a fearsome enigma, a labyrinth of as many mortal dangers as corporeal delights: New York City. For years it taunted me as an untasted paragon of urban adventure, but its reputation for physical harm paralyzed me. Finally, my lifelong obsession with cinema bolstered my courage to purchase a train ticket. Besides Paris, there is no better opportunity to visit a multitude of art-film houses than in Manhattan.

Monday 23 March
3:50 PM: I am sitting in the café of the Angelika Film Center on How-ston (though it's spelled Houston) Street, eating carrot 'n' curry soup after having seen Derek Jarman's Edward II. A really great film. The text was based on Christopher Marlowe's history play of the same name. All the Elizabethan verse was fun. But what Jarman has done with the play! The set simply consisted of stucco-stone walls with a dirt ground and some throne-like furniture. And the actors certainly weren't in period dress. Edward and his lover, Gaveston, wore tuxes or J. Crew clothing; the ultra-chic and powdered Queen Isabella wore Yves Saint-Laurent or something haute like that; and the army was dressed in British police gear. Anachronistic. A neat visual display.

The focus of the film was very different from that of the original play. In the original Marlowe only insinuates that Edward and Gaveston had a gay relationship, but this was a Queer-Nation-style Edward-was-gay-FACE-IT! film. Jarman certainly rearranged the text to suit his agenda.

Edward was different from any other gay character I've seen. He was real…kingly. Well done and touching.

10:45 PM:
[The British documentary] 35UP has to be the most novel documentary I will ever see. In 1964 the director interviewed about fifteen British kids, all age seven, from different walks of life. He then issued a film, 7UP, showing the results. Seven years later he interviewed the same kids again, and put out 14UP, then 21UP, 28UP, and now in 1992, 35UP. How weird! To compare how the kids answered questions like "What do you want to be when you grow up?" when they were seven, and their opinions on love and marriage, with how they really turned out. And the director said he's going to continue this until the year 2000. Can't wait.

Of course while you're watching it you put yourself in the interviewee's spot. What would you have said? To what degree at age thirty-five would you be called a success? What would you look like? One guy ended up homeless and mentally off-balance. At age seven he was a completely healthy, happy child. That's scary. I guess we really can't be sure of how things will turn out for us.

Wednesday 25 March
3:50 PM: I just got out of American Dream by Barbara Kopple. It won the Academy Award® for Best Documentary last year. I guess documentary filmmaking is indeed an art form. The filmmaker tries to convey a message visually and verbally, like in any film.

Dream was about the 1984 Hormel strike in Austin, Minnesota. It was quite a fight, went on for a year. The strikers used every radical union tactic in the book. The film was a head rush, because I didn't know whose side I was on. It was the idealists versus the realists (isn't it always?), "dignity" versus "supporting your family." Were the Hormel executives ultimately the bad guys? Were they indeed being unjustly money-hungry by lowering their wages even in the face of huge profits, or were they truly looking out for the company's welfare? Was the P-9 union earning more than enough to begin with? I think the filmmaker recognized that the Austin workers received a lot more than other meat packing employees. Even so, that wouldn't necessarily make a cut right. I can understand the blow to the P-9's dignity. I can understand their reasons to fight. But how much power did they really have? Ultimately, were they fighting for their survival or for the sake of the union? To preserve the principle of a union? Was it any longer relevant? What did unions stand for in the first place?

The thought of crossing the picket line - "You're a scab!" - horrifying pressure. Brother against brother: "He ain't my brother if he crosses the line…" People standing up for their principles. The final irony: after all the striking P-9'ers and their supporters at other plants were fired and replaced, the new workers ended up with essentially the original wages as before the cut. What an indignity. What mistakes were made, if any, and by whom? Could the P-9 have won?…

…I'm sitting in Angelika's café, sipping an iced coffee. Next film in ten minutes: E.M. Forster's Where Angels Fear To Tread - with Judy Davis! I worship her.

8:42 PM: Angels was enjoyable. Obviously that bland word doesn't connote a monstrous amount of enthusiasm. It wasn't bad per se, but there was one point in the narrative where I became confused, and that threw me off for the rest of the film. Was it me, or did the English man's return to the Italian guy's home after the carriage make no sense? There were some clear messages in the film - mostly criticisms of Victorian England - but the extent to which the characters resolved anything is unclear. Maybe Forster wrote the novel that way, and the film is being faithful to the text. Judy Davis was riotously stuffy. I always love Helen Mirren, and I was disappointed when she died so early in the film. And a question: is Helena Bonham-Carter in every Forster film adaptation for some reason? Does she have some sort of control in casting? Just asking.

Thursday 26 March
8:45 PM: Why the heck was I laughing? I am shameless. It turned out that two blocks over from [my host's] place was the Third Annual Extra Sick-and-Twisted Festival of Animation that I'd seen advertised in the Village Voice for the past month. I couldn't resist adding an animated film to my list. And the label Sick-and-Twisted didn't deter me - I thought nothing could shock me anymore.

But they followed through! They delivered the goods: several animated features that were absolutely tasteless. I didn't think anyone could stoop so low and get it produced! Cruelty to animals, cruelty to children, gratuitous violence, deafening expletives, desecrations of decorum and dignity. But it makes you wonder about yourself when you find this stuff funny even occasionally. Sick and twisted, indeed. Case in point: the short "How Much Is That Window in the Doggie?" in which a window pane skewers a little puppy. I can't believe I laughed.

A statement at the end of one of the shorts was particularly indicting but was intended in fun: "Dedicated to those who disapprove but continue to watch"...

April/May 1992