The past year has seemed busy, but it’s also had a kind of frustrating stasis to it, like most other recent years. It began for me, roughly, with horrible news of my friend Monty’s death from cancer, but I have also been very fortunate to have had some great medical news with other loved ones, so in that sense, 2023 had some good to offer, too. I also had a minor false alarm with my own high blood pressure—but it turns out this was simply white coat syndrome; my blood pressure is totally fine. And I’m putting the finishing touches on this installment with a head cold, the first one I’ve had since 2019, so that’s a (very mild) damper on the welcoming of the new year. These health questions are the things that seem to count more, and to add up, as you age. I had heard this from people older than myself all my life, but the truth is, nothing can adequately prepare you for having to live it. You just go through it, you do what you can, you try to take care of yourself and others and if all goes well, your capacities for love and action increase as a result—even if it sometimes seems like you’re slowing down.
And I don’t really want to slow down. In the big scheme of things I want to think of myself as still young enough, i.e., active and enthusiastic enough. I don’t want to think this because I’m chasing the cult of youth—that’s a dumb thing to do and, look, I go to bed early—but because I believe I still have before me many, many deep experiences and opportunities to learn and connect. To the extent that I can help it, I want to avoid growing into the kind of person who is mentally as well as physically inflexible, brittle.
For these reasons, my goals in the year ahead involve continuing on some of the same courses I’ve been following in recent months, and slowly surfacing some of the things that I’ve only been doing on my own, or maybe semi-privately. So I know I’ve said this before, and I hope that I’m saying it better, more truthfully, more forcefully this time around: there is more to come! More on the way!
Here though, mainly, I’ll just write a bit about books and movies I liked. I can’t promise I’m saying anything very insightful about any of them but if you’re like me, these kinds of accounts at least offer some interesting titles or names or reminders. So in that interest of sharing, and perhaps of sparking any further chats with readers about this or that, here are some of my enthusiasms.
BOOKS
For the past few years, I’ve been reading more books than I had previously. For a long time, because I read and skimmed a lot of scholarship, and because I spent a lot of time reading things online, long stretches passed when I barely read any novels or “pleasure” books. Chances are, some of you reading this can empathize with this slow erosion of personal literacy habits. It’s common for adults who remember the joys of youthful reading to lament the fact that they seem to have no time to read nowadays, or even if they do have time, nearby screen distractions always prove too strong.
Regardless, one of the things I’ve really come to grips with since leaving academia is how many “great” or simply interesting-sounding works of literature I never actually got around to reading, and so here I am, in my early middle years, reading a nobrow plethora of books great and small, new and old (mostly old), famous and infamous, like I’m 20 years old and there’s an entire world of literature to learn about. (Because there is.) For example: in 2023, I finally read Ulysses in its entirety, which I’d never done before. I’d read some parts of it previously. I’ve read Dubliners and Portrait. I’ll attempt the Wake one day. That was probably my biggest reading milestone, alongside achieving my goal of averaging at least one book per week—which I met, and exceeded (I read 59). In previous years I’ve hit somewhere in the 30s or 40s. For some people, 52 books a year is a cakewalk. For others, that one-a-week bar seems impossibly high. For me, at this point in my life, that’s a good minimum target number, at least, especially when the way to accomplish it involves spending less time scrolling mindlessly online in the little interstices of my daily schedule. I do hope and plan to read more books in 2024 than I did in 2023.
There’s nothing I can really say about Ulysses that will be of any use to any of you, by the way; I read it with virtually no critical apparatus or guides, because my goal was simply to get through it and let it wash over me on this go-round. To say that I’ve done it, however badly; I’ll do it again, and better, in the future. But it is the kind of book, a towering book, that stands out regardless of how one “enjoys” or “comprehends” it. That said, I did enjoy the majority of books I chose to read this year, and among the ones that have stuck with me the most are JL Carr’s A Month in the Country, Helene Hanff’s 84, Charing Cross Road, Paul Metcalf’s Apalache, Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo (trans. Margaret Sayers Peden), Vladimir Sorokin’s Telluria (trans. Max Lawton), Helen DeWitt’s The English Understand Wool, Anita Brookner’s Dolly, Patrick White’s The Eye of the Storm, Wilson Harris’ Palace of the Peacock, Fleur Jaeggy’s Sweet Days of Discipline (trans. Tim Parks), Vladimir Nabokov’s Ada, or Ardor (my friend Monty’s loaned copy, which I finally got around to), and also Eliot Weinberger’s essays (I read two or three of his collections). I’ve mentioned some of these before here already. Again, I liked the bulk of the books I read this past year, and so every time I try to list some favorites, I cite a slightly different collection of titles.
If you are interested in trying to read more books for pleasure but find it a little hard to fit it into your day without getting sidetracked, some things that have worked for me have been (a) to accept reading more than one book at a time, and switch focus freely to whichever one is most gripping, as a reading experience, so that you continually exercise your reading muscles, in a manner of speaking, and (b) to consciously spend less time succumbing to FOMO re: whatever dumb stuff you’d otherwise be caring about online. ‘Online’ is a pharmakon, cure and poison. In the larger perspective, nobody will care about the controversy involving this or that micro taste formation and who was arguing about it on Twitter or Instagram. Social media can be great tools but they have to remain that: tools. They shouldn’t set your agenda and that’s doubly true for a satisfying reading habit.
FILMS
Perhaps the highlights of my year in film-watching were a trio of Japanese movies made in the same era: I’ve mentioned Nobuhiko Obayashi’s Beijing Watermelon (1989) in a previous installment, and indeed that was possibly the single greatest film I saw for the first time in 2023. But it’s associated in my mind, at least a bit, with two phenomenal, eccentric, chill-vibes hangout movies directed by Masashi Yamamoto: Robinson’s Garden (1987) and What’s Up Connection (1990). The former involves a group of people who gravitate towards a kind of punk-anarchist squatting situation, while the latter concerns some exchanges between characters in Hong Kong and Japan. Some of what I love most in cinema, perhaps, is a kind of easy bustle where the scenes and compositions balance between the lively (or chaotic) and the formally assured, where people and objects and soundscapes feel lush and thick and active even in passages when “nothing happens.” These three movies each evince their own version of this quality. Masterpieces in my book.
Another highlight, also an ‘80s title, and one that I am slightly surprised and a little embarrassed to say that I hadn’t seen until the beginning of the year: Local Hero (Bill Forsyth, 1983). I remember reading about this movie so many years ago, and I never had a good reason not to see it, other than, perhaps, it seemed like it was just always around, and was not likely to change my life whenever I did get around to it. But this is the kind of thing that hits me to my core; its bittersweet irresolution is world-shattering. It captures with rare grace and ease the way that emotional ties creep up on a person, and the way that situations can be over before you’ve even realize what you were in.
I saw a lot of other terrific films though. Comments on some of them below. This year it seems like a lot of my viewing, and thus my highlights, were especially concentrated toward the late 20th century. This wasn’t a deliberate decision.
The Key (Ebrahim Forouzesh, 1987) Thanks to a twitter tip from Srikanth Srinivasan, I checked out this absolutely riveting, spare household thriller about a four-year-old boy who is locked in an apartment with his baby brother while his mother’s out grocery shopping. Unforgettable.
The Gun Hawk (Edward Ludwig, 1963) What begins with a spare, almost cheap and routine simplicity compounds into a dark and tragic play of masculinity: lost fathers, oblique “initiators,” broken and crooked and disappointing sons. One of those Westerns that should be better known and more widely discussed, but isn't, because it is neither a prestigious film nor boasts an established, big name director–like RG Springsteen's Hellfire, Charles Marquis Warren's Tension at Table Rock, William Whitney's The Outcast …
Jesse James (Henry King, 1939) … and speaking of Westerns, here’s another terrific one, which I sought out after Gina Telaroli’s Sight & Sound list piqued my curiosity. Henry King is one of those directors who for a long time might have been counted as a mainly competent, anonymous metteur-en-scene by a lot of cinephiles. (Certainly he didn’t come up in discussions a lot in my own younger “auteurist cinephile” days.) But the tide on this, I feel, has turned, due to the affection and insights of a number of eloquent people, and now many recognize the value in King’s filmography. This is one of the best of his that I’ve seen. Whereas The Gun Hawk feels almost mythic, pared down, Jesse James resourcefully presents a broader social panorama: a story of America and of frictions between economic and personal imperatives. And what a cast! Power, Fonda, Darwell, Scott, Donlevy, etc., etc.
Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1972-1973) and Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven (RWF, 1975) - Fassbinder is one of the rare filmmakers who really could seem to do it all at the highest levels; the intelligent screenplays, the facility with genre and allusion, the understanding of different characters’ perspectives, the attention to body and performance, the play of camera and of mise-en-scene, the political sophistication and anger. I also revisited some of his other films, like The Third Generation and The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. Always incredible.
A Bread Factory (Patrick Wang, 2019) - a tour-de-force about arts and community and arts administration, more interesting than perhaps that sounds. I cried at the end.
A Story from Chikamatsu (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1954) - what’s to be said? Mizoguchi, like Fassbinder, is one of the certified greatest.
A few 35mm highlights included a rewatch of Ugetsu monogatari (Kenji Mizoguchi again, 1953) and a first-time viewing of Pour Don Carlos (Musidora & Jacques Lasseyne, 1921), the latter a screening at the Music Box, with Tatsu Aoki and band providing live accompaniment. I really did not get out to as many Chicago Film Society screenings as I would have liked to this past year.
Will It Snow for Christmas? (Sandrine Veysset, 1996) - a quietly incendiary masterpiece of back-to-the-land hell and human relationships. This is overdue for a resurgent celebration.
Un Coeur gros comme ça [The Winner] (François Reichenbach) - An extraordinary movie from the great French documentarian about a Senegalese boxer in Paris, his daily life, his adaptation to Parisian rhythms. I think I came across an electronic copy of it by chance, and from there, watched it kind of randomly, and it was definitely one of the five or ten best viewing experiences of my year. Just a totally lovely, human, unpredictable little movie—little in the BEST sense.
The Kingdom (1994) & The Kingdom II (1997) - I admit, I don’t generally have much affinity for Lars Von Trier, although Breaking the Waves was an important film in my adolescence; but—one—sometimes he’s still capable of something great (Melancholia), and—two—maybe I’m coming around to him in some kind of new way? Maybe I need to revisit the ones I haven’t seen in a long time, and watch the ones I’ve skipped? Hard to say, yet, but this year I finally filled in a gap in my viewing and watched the first two Kingdom mini-series after many many years of telling myself “I’ll get around to those one day.” Something I either never heard or never retained when people talked about The Kingdom: it’s extremely funny! My fiancee and I developed a whole ritual for watching these episodes and it made for some very fun late autumn / early winter nights.
Pola X (Leos Carax, 1999 [French TV cut 2001]) - So here’s an issue. As with Von Trier, I am not necessarily sold on Carax, and this had/has steered me away from seeing Pola X (or Annette, come to think of it). But I watched this one, a notorious film maudit I guess you could say, and I was completely stunned. It is remarkable, mysterious and confident and complex, and I don’t know if it’s light years better than, say, The Lovers on the Bridge or Holy Motors, or if I was wrong about Lovers and Motors. Perhaps in 2024, just like with LVT, I should do a front-to-back retrospective, make my way through Carax’s works for a first or second time, and see what’s what. Because Pola X (and I slightly prefer the longer French TV cut) expresses its emotional core with such grand and beautiful and tender gestures that I’m moved even just thinking about it. I also want to read Pierre, or the Ambiguities now, but that was on my to-do list anyway.
Special mention for an at-home rewatch - The Burmese Harp (Kon Ichikawa, 1956) - that weird, humanist, quasi-musical gift of a movie, more or less a perfect movie in my eyes. If I were to write up a ‘top ten of all time’ list, this title would be in contention. I hadn’t seen it in about 20 years but it still humbled me.
Maybe the biggest disappointment of the year was when I finally saw The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (Roy Rowland, 1953). For years I’d looked forward to this beloved, anarchic children’s movie. The sets and stills always looked terrific. But mostly, I confess, it felt leaden and suffocating. The climax is slightly fun (slightly), but whatever charm it has for many other viewers was lost on me.
I didn’t see a lot of new things in 2023. My least favorite new release was probably Scream 6: miserable, soulless, mind-numbing. It’s not even that it’s inept or evil; it’s devoid of all the texture, the wonder, the narrative play, the cleverness, or the points of contact with any reality I know or might wish to know, in short, any of the sorts of things I might look for in films. If all movies were like Scream 6 (and it seems like that’s sort of what some people want), then I would not waste any more time thinking about movies.
I liked a decent handful of what I did see but the outstanding title from my modest dabbling in newish cinema was Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam (Lijo Jose Pellissery, 2022), a very funny and sly movie you can watch on Netflix. Honorable mention, probably, to Arnaud Desplechin’s Brother and Sister (also 2022). Still to see: many recent ones, including Human Flowers of Flesh, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, American Fiction, Close Your Eyes, Fallen Leaves, Ferrari, Anatomy of a Fall, and maybe even Poor Things, and I hope to catch up with as many of these as I can in the next month or two. I did see, and I liked to varying degrees, The Holdovers, May December, Tori and Lokita, and The Killer. I have also not yet seen Killers of the Flower Moon.
Also, for what it’s worth, when I did my little Substack rundown of things seen in 2022, I had not seen The Eternal Daughter at the time—but I watched it within a day or two of sending out the ‘stack, and Joanna Hogg’s great, hilarious, sensitive work is probably my single favorite film of the current decade so far. Not a huge sample size, so take that with a grain of salt, but there it is.
To all of you reading this, may you have a fantastic new year full of health and joy. I owe some of you emails and things still, so I hope I don’t fall too far behind on any of that correspondence. 2024, I greet you, and I’ll be making those long distance phone calls to better places on a regular basis …
Happy New Year, dear Zach! So much to relate to in the opening paragraphs! And glad to have suggested a film you loved.
Wishing you a happy and healthy new year. Looking forward to your dispatches in 2024!
Happy New Year, Zach!