Dancing on a Midsummer Night 1935

I was looking through a gridbook and found this review of the 1935 film of "Midsummer Night's Dream" written by myself as a sentimental 21 year old college student. I find it even more interesting as a man with a job and family who will turn 31 tomorrow:

Old Film can be dangerous. It undermines the illusion that the present is eternal. We will not always overflow with vitality, strength, and beauty. Tonight we watched the 1935 Midsummer Night's Dream. It was breathtaking. What affected me most were the long dance scenes of the fairies and goblins. The dance was beautiful and stunning. It embodied life and death, magic and love, passion and sadness, sexuality and strength. It made me want to rise and dance around campus.

But that dance was not tonight, it was 65 years ago. All the dancers (even the children) are either broken with age or long dead and decaying. Film gives us something entirely different from a live performance. A live dance lets us become lost in the furious passions of this moment. In this moment I feel bold and strong, and the women in my life are as beautiful and graceful as the dancers.

Seeing a dance from 1935 doesn't allow such thoughtless joys. We must celebrate with those long dead. We cannot help but see this spellbinding pathos of the dance within the context of time. This forces us the acknowledge that even our own nights of dancing out the youthful life that pulses in our veins will end. We too grow old and die. We are aging even as we dance.

Film lets us partake in these mad revelries with past generations, but it caries with it a sad taste of mortality. As T.S. Eliot declared, “The dancers are all gone under the hill.” The dance may be eternal but the dancers are not.




Unfortunately the first video I posted was deleted. This is another section of the film.

"The New World"

I don't plan to make it a common occurrence to put my movie reviews on this blog. I want this blog to be about interesting ideas, and not just some random conglomeration of my personal tastes. That being said, however, I find this particular film so thought-provoking and such a powerful work of art that I feel comfortable discussing it here.

If you haven't seen "The New World" you really should watch it as soon as is possible. It is one of the most fascinating films I have ever seen, and perhaps the most beautifully filmed. I have seen it twice now. Like most films by Terrence Malick (director of “The Thin Red Line”) its depth and meaning grows with each viewing. This movie seems to have unfortunately suffered from its own advertising. Many people who went expecting a historical romance along the lines of "Braveheart," encountered a film so subtle and profound it didn't make sense to them. Reviews were mediocre. It floundered in theaters. (Most people expecting a comic strip might find a painting by Rembrandt disappointing.) And yet I would have to say this is the best film I have ever seen.

It has a subtle beauty and profound way of watching its characters that is unlike any film you have likely ever seen. There are only about 100 lines of dialog in the entire film. The rest is simply watching. Never has watching interactions or gestures of the characters reenacting history been so engrossing. The film only briefly plays with myths like the “noble savage” or the “welcoming Pocahontas” only to show its characters to be deeper and more complex imaginations that the audience must interpret themselves. It is always watching… watching the complex interplay of new cultures… watching the years pass… watching people rise and fall then rise again. Most of it has no words at all. (Not in the dull independent film way of watching people doing nothing and calling it art, but in a way that is obviously meaningful and understandable in spite of its depth.) It is told less like a narrative and more like the way someone might remember the events of their life. “The New World” is about people in the midst of great change. It will resound with tragedy and beauty long after the petty political dramas of this year’s Oscars are forgotten.

Watch this film with an open mind and you will find an artistic treasure well worth watching again and again.