Cheap Shots

A mixture here of a new movie, relatively young literature, and old music.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Pt. 2

All things must end, yes, and so it is with the Potter film franchise. The film series as a whole was uneven, but at least it can say it's gone out on a high note. Deathly Hallows, Pt. 2 shares the same strengths and weaknesses that have characterized every film since Goblet of Fire: To its credit, it is visually stunning, and the casting is mostly wonderful. To the film's detriment, it is plagued by issues of pacing. There is, simply, too much material to get through. Half-Blood Prince suffered worst of all the films, and Hallows, Pt. 2 probably suffers the least, but suffer it does. The normal complaints and compliments aside, this is the most consistently entertaining Potter film since the genuinely wonderful Prisoner of Azkaban, and, if it doesn't come close to exceeding that movie in quality, it doesn't embarrass itself, either.

The Wild Things
Dave Eggers
I've never been able to figure out what makes Eggers such an effective writer. He writes with economy, and at first glance, there is nothing to separate his prose from a thousand other fiction writers. But his writing is better. It is. I just don't know why. The Wild Things is the novelization of the film adaptation of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are that Eggers cowrote with director Spike Jonze. Eggers has written here a very entertaining, very quick book. The first few chapters, when Max is at home, are stunningly good at getting inside Max's head. You feel for him and, most crucially, for the people around him. There aren't any stock characters in the family. The chapters with the Wild Things, which make up the majority of the book, kept me interested, but I'll never tell anyone they need to read it, and within a few years I doubt I'll remember having read it myself.

Stands for Decibels
by The dB's

This album is a recent discovery for me. I don't remember how I picked it up, but at some point I put it in my iTunes library, and, at another point, I got around to listening to it. Six months later, I'm still in love. It's listed in the family with R.E.M. (Contemporaries) and Big Star (Influences). I'm not a big fan of either of those bands, nor am I fan of most of the bands Big Star are credited with having influenced, but The dB's are different. I put them in the general family with XTC, though that has more to do with an intangible attitude than it does anything musical. Stands for Decibels is considered in the critics' circles to be a minor classic, and that's about right. It was, and remains, too weird to be a popular hit, but, for those to whom it will appeal, it offers a combination of great writing, musical risk-taking, a fabulously tight but raw sound, and a brilliantly-sequenced album. Likely to remain an all-time favourite.

Apparition in the Woods

I have more or less come to terms with the fact that I will die. That used to be a problem for me, literally keeping me up at nights. But I've made peace with it. I'm hoping it won't be for another sixty or seventy years yet, but I am okay with the overall concept.

What still makes me profoundly uncomfortable is the concept of extinction. Serious contemplation of the sun's burning out or the universe snapping back in on itself like an over-stretched elastic can, and will, send me into spiraling bouts of depression. They do not always last for long, but they are moments when I contend with what experience shows me to be the blackest night of the soul. I can end, and that's alright, but there must be something to continue. There must be life.

* * * * *

I recently finished rereading Alex Ross' survey of 20th Century music, The Rest Is Noise. It is a wonderful book, impeccably researched, and written in such a way that you can feel Ross' love and passion for the music radiate off the page. The majority of the chapters chronicle a period and a specific group of composers. It begins with a chapter on Mahler and Strauss, and proceeds, more or less, chronologically. Ross has a gift for writing about music, and here he manages to illuminate the works of the century's great composers with the cultural and personal context in which they were written.

For my money, the best chapters in The Rest Is Noise are those that concern themselves with a single composer. The chapter "Apparition in the Woods," about Jean Sibelius, is far and away my favourite. Sibelius had much success in his life; he was a living National Treasure of Finland, he was well-known throughout the world, and his works continue to be performed by orchestras everywhere. Despite all this, he had the misfortune of coming to prominence during a time when a large group of composers were willfully and blindly rejecting tonality in the name of creating The New. He never received the respect of his piers, certainly not during his lifetime, and he was rarely truly happy.

The most famous piece in Sibelius' canon is likely his fifth symphony, a work of both profound beauty, and quiet innovation. The final movement is astonishing, the last three minutes a breathtaking struggle as the orchestra tries to break free from whatever is holding it back. When the players finally reach the summit, there is nothing else like it in music. Nothing else like it in this world, for that matter. When you listen to Sibelius' Symphony No. 5 after having read "Apparition in the Woods," it is a great boon to the spirit that someone who was so unhappy in life could create something of such everlasting beauty.

* * * * *

Currently, I am reading Dave Eggers' The Wild Things, the novelization of his cinematic adaptation of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. Max, the protagonist, is about the same age I was when I first asked my mom what death is. Last night, just before going to sleep, I read a chapter in which Max's science teacher mentions that humans will eventually be extinct, through some means or another. To Max, this is a revelation. The world makes little sense to him as it is, and this doesn't help. Eggers makes getting into Max's mind look effortless, and handles all of this with clean, simple, effective prose.

As I read, I could feel the depression creeping up. It always starts in my stomach, and spreads from there. It makes it hard to breathe, and harder still to think about anything but the end of the world. Of course I know that one day the sun will burn out, and when it does, it will likely scald the Earth. And I know that human beings will have gone extinct well before then, likely through our own fault. But I live, day to day, without those thoughts in my head, because I wouldn't get anything done otherwise. There is an interpretation of Atheism which I rather like, that this life is all you've got, so you best do everything you can. I prefer that idea to this being a 75-year SAT exam for admittance to Heaven. But I still don't want to live with it on my mind, every day. I am an Agnostic because I do not have the courage to be an Atheist.

I finished the chapter, and reached for my headphones. I turned off the light, put on the final movement of Sibelius' fifth, and listened. In those final moments, as the orchestra attempts to build, pulled back again and again by the darkness, finally emerging triumphant, it was telling me that as long as there is beauty like this in the world, it is worth existing.

You are here, it says. That's all that matters now.