I
9/11 In The Goon-Shack
September 11th 2001 I'm sat in the smoking room of a psychiatric hospital listenin' to a fella telling me all about the time Judas Iscariot sucked him off, out back some ale-house couple hours west of Jerusalem. "He earned his 30 pieces that night," says he, "I'll tell you that for the price o' a builder's rawhide. And I'd have happily given him thrice as much again, had I been in any position to give him anything. As it happens, I was well skint."
I nod. "I dare say he'd have been a wild man for the willy, right enough."
"Oh, save us, he was shockin'," says he, "Swear to God, the nuts o' fifty men couldn't o' held the lust he had boilin' 'tween the thighs."
Round about, sulphur-mawed men and women sit muttering to themselves or growling at fag-ends or grinding great clods of theosophical cud atween teeth ragged and cragged and blackened and bent. In the center of the room, the Spice Girls sing about 2 becoming 1 from out a set of knackered speakers.
"Did he swallow, at all?" asks Garth, an old fella sat leafing through a month old broadsheet, pulling on a counterfeit Regal King Size.
"He done none o' that," says my companion, "And well he didn't. I dare say he'd have had no bother wi' thon noose, if'n he had've, for he'd o' been choked t'death there and then."
For a time I sit watching the smoke rising up and out the throats of those assembled, great clouds o' grey / black fugg jiggering and jaggering out past trembling lips, wreathing about dope-dulled skulls, drifting past eyes look like candles flick'rin dimly other side of upheld bed-sheets.
I watch that, and I watch also the woman in the corner, woman sat patting at her eyes with the end of a lipstick-stained sleeve, woman now and then mouthing the name of a husband she never met, of a son she never bore.
I watch her, and I watch also the skyway other side of the glass door, I watch that skyway as the fly bound in the yarn of the arachnid's arsehole watches said spindly-legged bastard fidgeting on the other end o' yon web. I watch that skyway as the fella lain in muck and shit and the blood o' his friends watches some faceless phantom through the lens of the rifle held afore him.
I watch that skyway with the stomach careering around my ribs and with the taste of a savage terror draped o'er my tongue as a shawl.
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Article comments
1 - Iloz Zoc
Superb.
2 - Roger Choate
More than amazing!
3 - Melita Teale
Louiiiiiiiiise. That's the review of 2007, so far.
4 - Duke De Mondo
Folks, thank you. I'm glad you liked it. I should add that the names in the first section there have all been changed.
5 - Mat Brewster
Great stuff as always Duke. I'm not sure I could watch this film five times. I mean I loved it, but it was so gut wrenching emotionally speaking, that I don't think my cry like a baby glands could handle it.
I just watched Bloody Sunday the other day too. Gesum, Greengrass sure knows how to punch a guy in the emotional balls.
6 - Duke De Mondo
Thanks, Sir Brewster. I dare say i won't watch it again for a while. It's just such a damn good film, even as it's harrowing the hell out of me i can't help but be in awe of Greengrass' technique.
And on a side-note, Jimmy Nesbitt, star of Bloody Sunday, was in a flick last year which also starred... my good self! imagine that. me and Jimmy. like THAT. (links fingers to some degree by way of illustrating closness twixt himself and jimmy nesbitt, star of Bloody Sunday and the last Woody Allen, which, sadly, was shite.)
7 - Jon Sobel
Most excellent, sir. Sheesh, five times!? I could see watching it maybe once more... and then maybe showing it to my kids when they grow up, if I were to have any kids. But then I was just over the river, not the ocean, when it happened...
The discussion of which movie to see made me laugh. Just the other day my lady and I thought about seeing Letters from Iwo Jima but I wasn't in the mood for a war pic, so we saw Pan's Labyrinth instead - which turned out to be partially a war pic. (But one of the best films of the decade, I say.)
8 - Duke De Mondo
thank you, Jon! And it's interesting, the across the ocean thing; maybe that's why Greengrass, who is British after all, was able to make such a film. compare his work with the very different World Trade Center by Oliver Stone, for example. If Greengrass had been American, perhaps United 93 would have much more resembled Flight 93, the TV movie?
Then again, 9/11 is a curious one because, in the UK, we were pretty much led to believe that it was ours as much as anyone elses. this is a very curious thing altogether. If, (NOTE! HYPOTHETICAL, I'M NOT ADVOCATING!) for example, buckingham palace or something had been attacked in such a way, i very much doubt that the reports in the press and on television, with the black banner headings and 24-hour coverage and what not, would have been different in any significant way.
but, now; Pan's Labyrinth. That one, any other year, would probably have been my Best of 2006. If you've yet to see The Devil's Backbone, Del Toro's previous civil war-based young person encounters fantastical things drama, i highly reccomend it. It's not as good as Pan's..., but it's not a kick in the arse off it.
9 - duane
Duke, excellent. Unique. And I should add, not intending to imply that it is a routine matter, "as always." Damn.
10 - Jon Sobel
The general sense here in the States was what you suggest - that United 93 wouldn't have been as good if it had been made by an American. It makes intuitive sense, although there's no way to prove it.
11 - Ray Ellis
Don't be calling yourself a critic, Duke. Your writings put the rest of us to shame. Well done!
12 - Duke De Mondo
Jon, that makes sense, as you say. Mind you, there were folks whom i know in this town who were FAR more affected by 9/11 than certain American friends of mine. It's worth looking into, i think, the effect of these things on folks oceans removed from the area afflicted. It can't JUST be human potential for empathy, although that plays a part. it seems very selective, what we feel for and what passes by as another disaster or attack. And of course a lot of THAT has to do with coverage of the event.
Duane and Ray, thank you very much, i'm glad you liked it. And Ray, i write the way i do partially becuase i'm not GOOD enough to be a critic. i don't have the discipline for it, or the tightness. a clear, informative, informed review is a lot harder to write than some sprawl like that up yonder. again, thank you no end.
13 - Howard Dratch
Greengrass refuses to present these people as monsters, I'd wager, for at least two reasons. One of them is that they weren't, at least as far as they were concerned. What they did may be evil, and surely you and I both agree on that. But were they evil? To be evil, does a man not need to be consciously acting against the notion of goodness?The movie managed to take the normally boring, sappy and melodramatic story of tragedy and not make a TV pap bowl out of it. Some people stood up and it is those souls that shine especially, then all the martyrs on the plane. But it is our side that were martyrs and there is no way the people who would kill thousands can be the wretched of the earth. They were young, scared, stupid terrorists fighting to bring down a world. If they are too filled with mindless hate to remember the nature of good and evil they were surely not martyrs.
As usual Sir Duke, I like your review, I like your thoughts. I surprisingly liked the movie. But they were evil. To be that kind of mass murderer a man needs only to do evil whether or not he happens to consider it evil for some bizarre religious hatred. There is a notion of goodness and there is good & evil and, religious or not (I am not), evil still describes the murderer of innocents.
Terrific review.
14 - Scott Butki
Another great job, Duke.
15 - Jon Sobel
i'm not GOOD enough to be a critic. i don't have the discipline for it, or the tightness.
Maybe so by some standards, but the way you present your thoughts on the film in question by creating settings and dialogues between characters is original (although cf. Plato and the ancient Greeks) and makes your form of criticism more fun to read than the usual!
Any plans to put out a collection in the form of a book?
16 - Duke De Mondo
Scott, thank you!
Howard - those are legitimate, worthwhile thoughts, and I've considered it at great length (partly the reason why I never wrote about this film 'till now). Personally, i think the true evil resides in the hearts of the bastards who brainwash these violent extremists in the first place. I don't know that I can think of the ones who hijacked the planes, for example, as being 100% evil, although, as i said up yonder, the action most certainly was. But it's the ones who coaxed them towards it, who first filled their heads with such detestable, warped, sickening ideologies and worldviews that i feel most angry about, and feel are most deserving of the term. To be taught such vile, wretched pish is bad enough, to be doing the TEACHING, standing back and watching whilst the brainwashed are going out to "matryr" themselves, before moving on to the next group of impressionable, impassioned young men and women is truly abhorant and disgusting and, yeah, evil.
I don't know if i'm right in saying that or if i'm being overly niave or, i dunno. But it's what sticks in my gut, anyhow. And thank you for the kind words, and for reading and commenting.
Jon - I've considered putting together some kind of compilation book thing, but at the minute i'm goin mad writin a novel and screenplay. what i did consider though was doing that once the novel was done, maybe self-publishing it as a kind of in-between whilst the terrible process of finding folks willing to publish the novel goes on. It's somethin i've thought about a lot, at any rate.
17 - GL Hauptfleisch
And I thought I was the only one "staggering out the cinema like a hobo just pulled a bungalow out his urethra." In the midst of stealing phrases from you again, I garnered a fine review of a stunning movie.--Gordon