The Vardathon Begins

Orca mammone, exploding trains, and the Oscar Streaker

Last year, I bought The Complete Agnés Varda during the Criterion Collection flash sale (which for me, is a religious holiday). She was a groundbreaking filmmaker who helped kick off the French New Wave with her independent film La Pointe Courte, which weaved two stories in a cinéma vérité style full of languid tracking shots that focused on everyday working people. She is better known for three films, Cleo from 5 to 7, Vagabond and The Gleaners and I, a drama and a documentary, which are more alike than I ever realized.

She brings the everyday to vibrant life. To paraphrase François Truffaut, it’s impossible to make an anti-war film because war looks exciting; making a gripping film about a fishing village and a couple who visit to decide whether to break up, is more difficult. But Varda manages with ease, in her debut feature.
She used inexperienced actors for most of the roles, so they seem effortlessly natural and alive. It’s the couple, the actors, who seem to move through the village like ghosts. The man grew up there, and wants to return out of nostalgia. In a mainstream film, the village would be an eye-catching backdrop for their romance. Here, the lovers are pretty scenery for life in the fishing village. It’s an interesting reversal.

The disc also included two short films that Varda made for the tourism board, about the coast of France and several castles. She quirkily makes them her own, almost satires of themselves, or living fairy tales.

The set begins with a 2019 retrospective of Varda’s career, Varda by Agnés. This is more typical of her later work, lighthearted and artistic, only taking art seriously, never itself. She was more than spry in her eighties; she flits like a bird, physically and mentally, from place to place and thought to thought. Filmmaking as a woman was not an easy undertaking, but when the system put up roadblocks, she worked outside of it. The first disc also includes a short fairy tale film about a girl who loses three buttons and gets a wish.

I’ll be watching them in chronological order; if you have the Criterion Channel, you can watch along. She was one of a kind, and made very memorable films that still resonate.

As we’re distracted by China’s spy balloons, the killer is calling from inside the house: a chemical train derailed near East Palestine, Ohio and “authorities” set the spilled chemicals ablaze so Norfolk Southern wouldn’t have to clean it up. The fumes are killing wildlife, pets, and turning into hydrochloric acid rain that’s burning paint off of cars. But “it’s safe to breathe,” authorities say.

Let’s recall that these same people let first responders breathe in the fumes at Ground Zero on 9/11 and still fight to support them as they die in droves of cancer. And they like cops, they don’t particular give two shits for regular people. The Trump administration rescinded Obama-era rules to protect us from derailing oil trains, but I’m sure this will get blames on windmills or something. Another train carrying chemicals just derailed in Texas, but let’s allow the railroads to overwork employees and deny them sick leave because they don’t want to hire enough people to cover shifts. What could go wrong? And now, they want to ship natural gas from Pennsyltucky across South NJ by train. Flammable gas in the Pines!

Two stories that are slightly less horrifying follow. Robert Opel, the man known as The Oscar Streaker, was a conservative New Jersey boy who wanted to get into politics, until he kept getting fired for being gay. So he moved to San Francisco and opened an art gallery that included Tom of Finland, wrote for the local gay paper, and performed artistic stunts like the streak that tickled Niven’s mustache to raise awareness for gay rights. His life story was a thrilling read and should be a movie. He was a brave and unapologetic man, who fought the ridiculously light sentence that the ex-cop murderer of Harvey Milk and George Moscone received, and was himself murdered. The article compares him to Robert Mapplethorpe; they knew one another. His life should be remembered.

Another story I liked was about Orca Moms who still feed their adult sons. It’s written as a cautionary piece because the mother orca are working extra hard, but the results speak for themselves; these big boys aren’t living in the oceanic equivalent of mom’s basement and playing video games and avoiding work. They are bigger than their competition, and probably pass on mom’s genetic material more often. They reminded me of a seaborne mammone, the Italian word for an adult man who still lives near or with their mom into his thirties and beyond. The pandemic and economy have made it more common for monetary reasons, but it existed long before that.

It amazes me how we are so surprised by any sort of family structure that isn’t some bullshit from a ‘50s television show written under pressure from the House Un-American Activities Committee. Just as over 1500 animal species exhibit homosexuality, different family structures that include “aunting” and “uncling” rather than bearing offspring, packs, prides, orca moms raising kids long after they are juveniles, partnerships across species, and so on… maybe the fucking Bible wasn’t based on observation of reality, you think? Last time I checked, the sun doesn’t revolve around Earth, and gay penguins don’t make baby Jesus cry. Some species change gender. It was even in Jurassic Park, and I’m sure some right wing influencer will rediscover that next week and throw an internet tizzy for clout, and we’ll all mock them while sharing their post and increasing their reach.

I woke up this morning anxious and aggravated. I let stupid things get to me, like a late order, and a possibly defective purchase that I may need to return. I forgot to charge my headphones, so I was alone with my angry thoughts on my morning hike, and I let them consume me, while I was surrounded by a gorgeous sunrise, friendly dogs, and flocks of migratory birds.

In short, I was a fool.

When I walk in the woods, I must often remind myself of Thoreau’s dictum¹:

'What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?'

And it’s the truth; if you’re taking the trouble to forest bathe, as the Japanese call it, what the hell are you doing on your phone, or thinking about annoying things that will surely be waiting for you once you leave the woods? To quote another genius, Jake LaMotta as depicted in Raging Bull, “it defeats its own purpose.”

Friendship bog in the Pines

I threw myself into a tougher than usual workout at lunchtime to clear my brain, and it mostly worked. Tomorrow the weather will be unseasonably warm, and I think I’ll go for a morning bike ride. Then it’s rain for two days.

On Saturday morning, the forest fire service is allowing visitors to climb Apple Pie Hill fire tower for a view. If the clouds have cleared, I’ll lug my camera up there and get some photos. It’s the highest point in South Jersey, and on clear days they say you can see the Atlantic in one direction, and Philly in the other. I’ve been wanting to climb it, but it was locked down after vandals began throwing old TV sets from the tower to watch them explode.

I am sure it gets boring being a teenager living in the Pines, but go light your farts on fire or something, kids.

Just not when there’s a high risk of wildfires.

1. My mistake; Whitman dictum, not Thoreau.