Why do American horror movies all suck so bad! Americans, or perhaps I should say Hollywood, just does not know how to make horror movies. The Hollywood idea of a horror movies is to just be have lots of blood and gore and grotesque makeup and special effects and cats jumping around for cheap startle effects every 10 minutes or so.
And then there's this whole "vampire romance" thing going on with Twilight - a movie I have been doing my best to avoid. My daughter is interested in it simply because her friends at school are reading the book and so on and so forth. But she is barely aware of what it is about and I am sure would find it as or more boring than I would. Maybe I am not giving the whole Twilight thing a chance - but after Buffy & Angel I don't feel that Twilight could possibly be better than Joss Whedon's take on the genre. And considering the critics reviews and the fact that it is mostly teen or pre-teen girls who are into it, I just can't see myself sitting through it. I'' take Julie to see Tale of Despereaux and I have already taken her to see Madagascar II (and since I'm a Ben Stiller fan I rather like it), but as I said I am going to put off Twilight indefinately.
I guess I should also mention that despite listening to Nina Hagen and PJ Harvey and Siouxie & Banshees and other such great music over the years, Julie still prefers Hannah Montanna and hiphop music.
Anyway, back to vampire movies. On the way home from dinner with Yumi and Julie last night I noticed that the Swedish vampire movie "Let the Right One In" was playing at one of the local art theatres. I thought I had missed my chance to see it and was intrigued by the reviews which touted it as the antidote to "Twilight." This movie I wanted to see, so I headed out last night and caught it.
Wow. That is the way to make a horror movie. Actually, it wasn't so much a scarefest type of horror movie. More like, an exploration of a horrific situation and its grim and deeply disturbing implications. There were several gruesome images in it - but I never felt they were gratuitious. The tone of the film overall was macabre, somber, chilling and claustrophobic. There were some special effects (including a very cheesy looking cat-astrophe) but it was a low-budget film that relied more on setting up mood and advancing the plot rather than trying to overawe people with CGI to make you forget a lack of plot or character as in all too many Hollywood movies. I also really appreciated how points were made very subtly with a look or an image or a short remark. Unlike American films, this Swedish movies didn't assume that its audience would be composed of slack-jawed troglodytes and so didn't feel the compulsion to narrate or have the characters explicate ever little thing or overdue an image or a facial expression. And there were no explosions!
I think the only thing that would have made it better would have been a soundtrack by Portishead (esp their last CD) or PJ Harvey (a la "White Chalk" or "Is This Desire"). Perhaps that would have been overdoing it however, so maybe it is just as well that there was not such a soundtrack. As an aside, "White Chalk" and Porthishead's "3" (what an imaginative title for their 3rd recording - not) were my favorite CD's of 2008. Out of curiosity I did a google search on them and found out that indeed the term "sepulchral" had appeared in various reviews in connection to both CDs. Who actually uses that word anymore in any context? And how many times would it ever appear in a glowingly favorable review of a music CD? Granted, "glowingly" in this case would probably be the glow of a black light. Anyway, what are the odds of that word getting used in the reviews of two CDs by two different artists in the same year? Anyway, I just thought that was amusing.
Okay, now for the "Let the Right One In" spoilers...
The movie takes place in a very bleak and unadorned apartment complex in the middle of a dreary Scandanavian winter sometime in the mid-80s. Is this the Scandanvian equivalent of a proejct? Looks like it. It is about a painfully thin and incredibly pale bleach blonde 12 year old boy named Oskar who is obsessed with newsarticles about murder and mayhem and probably reads true crime novels. He is very meek and shy in addition to being creepy and so gets bullied at school and spends his time at home pretending (or practicing) to knife the bullies who are tormenting him. Then he meets his new neighbor - a somber 12 year old girl with pitch black hair named Eli. Between the landscape and the color tones of these two the movie could have been in black and white for all the difference it would have made - except that other people in the movie tended to have actual complexions and brown hair and clothes with a little bit of color to them. Anyway, this girl Eli lives in the apartment next door with her creepy dad? uncle? kidnapper? which is bare of furniture and whose windows are blocked by cardboard.
As things progress, we learn that Eli is a vampire and the man she lives with, Hakan, is her helper whose job is to go out and murder people to drain their blood to bring back to Eli. While Hakan goes about his gruesome business, Eli is coyly making friends with the lonely 12 year old budding psycho Oskar. And yet it is all done so delicately that a majority of the yahoo reviewers (who all gave it As) have commented upon what a touching and bittersweet love story it was. And yet - the implications of the movie are really horrific - but again done in such a way that I think some of these reviewers actually missed it.
So here let me touch on some scenes that really struck me as I was watching it and even more in retrospect (spoiler warnings for real this time):
There was an interlude in the movie where Oskar (whose parents are seperated or divorced) goes out into the countryside to be with his father. His father seems to be a very nice, handsome, and healthy man (both psychologically and physically) and the scenes of him with his father show that Oskar could potentially have a good and happy life, though a later scene where he is visiting his father shows this idyll of the perfect father-son relationship come screeching to a halt when another man comes to visit (his father's gay lover?) and suddently everyone gets very quiet and things become very awkward. This struck me because the movie was showing both an alternative happy life for Oskar that was within reach and yet just beyond reach - to better highlight the horrific implications of the way his life will actually go because of Eli.
At one point a woman is accidentally turned into a vampire and through this we get to see that it is no dark gift but rather a horrible curse. After only a single day and single night like this the woman chooses a flamey sunshiney death over continuing to exist in that way. These scenes were interesting because they not only moved forward the plot (insofar as blowing Eli's cover and bringing down the righteous wrath of at least one of her neighbors with all the murderous and bloody results of that confrontation) but also showed what is otherwise not said (how Eli got in that condition herself) and highlighted both Eli's anguish and pain but also her weakness (that she continues to cling to unlife as a serial killing unnatural parasite).
The most satisfying part of the movie in a disturbing and gruesome way is when the bullies corner Oskar in a pool all alone and threaten to stab him in the eye with a switchblade unless they let him hold him underwater for 3 minutes (in which case they'll only cut him up a bit instead of blinding him). Unfortunately for the bullies - Eli's still looking out for Oskar. The tension of this scene is almost unbearable (though I've just spoiled it all for you) and the rescue is both grotesque and understated as the violence occurs off camera (though not some of the results). It was a strange scene as it was suspenseful, awful, cathartic, stomach turning, grotesquely slapstick, and even strangely sweet and romantic all at once. I don't think any Hollywood director would have ever filmed a scene like that - and the way it was filmed was the only way it could possibly have worked I think.
The most disturbing scene in the whole move though (for me)happened in the middle. It was the scene where I really got what it was all about and what Eli had been doing, was doing and would be doing. It was very subtle, very brief. It was just a look and no words were said. Hakan is about to go out again with his tools to murder someone for Eli and they briefly look at each other and she reaches out and tenderly touches Hakan's grizzled aging face. In that moment I knew - Hakan had once been a lonely 12 year old boy and had also been seduced (after a fashion) by Eli and thus become her murderous caretaker. And now she needed a new one and Oskar was next in line. In that moment it became very clear that this romance between Oskar and Eli was not a touchingly sweet dark fairtale but a very macabre and horrific tragedy in the making. That one brief look between them that made everything clear sent a chill through me. What American movie would dare have the subtlety to have a scene like that without ruining it with overblown grimaces, sighs, and exposition?
Basically the movie boiled down to this: the seduction of an innocent but vulnerable young boy on the cusp of manhood by a creature who is either cynically manipulative or is so lonely and desperate to survive that she has passed beyond conscience and so does what she must to whomever she must. I don't think Twilight could possibly come close to this kind of movie - and probably it is grossly unfair of me to compare a Swedish psychological horror move with a Hollywood teenbopper popcorn flic.
Just yesterday I heard two apalling examples of people who think they are Buddhists but who obviously don't get not only the Dharma but basic human decency and sensitivity.
One example is that for the last three months or so I have been visiting one of the "pioneer" Japanese women who in the 60's had brought over a form of Nichiren Buddhism to the USA. Her husband called me in to the hospital because she had a terminal case of cancer and he felt it would really help her spirits to have someone come in to chant with her. She had long since (ten years or more) become disillusioned with her previous affiliation. I was happy to do this for her, and so made several hospital visits and one home visit before she passed away. At least one of her old friends, a fellow pioneer who was also a disillusioned former member of the same organization, came to visit her in the hospital and chanted with us, as did her husband and occasionally my daughter when she was with me. There is much I could say about her, her unflagging spirits, dedication, kindness even in the midst of a terrible sickness. She was truly an inspiration, and as I said to her husband I wish I could have met her earlier.
But here's what this blog is about - when her husband called me to inform me about her passing, he also mentioned that finally, towards the very end, some of her former compatriots in that organization she left finally showed up. When they heard that a Nichiren Shu priest (myself) had been coming to visit and chant with her their reaction was - "Well, that's all wrong. He wasn't chanting correctly." This woman's husband couldn't believe that these people would raise such an issue, and at such a time. The meaness and pettiness of was apalling.
My second phone call yesterday was from a member of my Sangha who called to tell me about the spiteful words being said about Byrd (who was, however, not named but it was clear it was about her) by another member of this same organization on a yahoo newsgroup. This person had been one of the people who was involved in banning Byrd from the activities of her chosen Sangha. One reason was because she dared to attend a retreat I was leading and had pictures of her and myself together at the retreat on her blog here at fraughtwithperil. Byrd died a few weeks later of a heart attack, but her body was left undiscovered for something like two weeks. None of her ostensible Sangha members ever thought to check up on her - afterall she was persona non grata due to her association with me. The apartment was later swept by a Hazmat team and for quite a long time sealed up. When these psuedo-Buddhists finally came in they found that Byrd's butsudan had been knocked down (it could have been by her abandoned cats or later the Hazmat team) and was collecting cobwebs (supposedly - and even then not surprising as her apartment had been sealed for quite some time). This psuedo-Buddhist posted that everything Byrd had ever written was questionable because due to the condition of her butsudan she had been neglecting her practice). So much presumption here! I don't even know where to begin. But to impugn the reputation of a woman who has passed away, furthermore a woman who the poster was instrumental in alienating and isolating before her death due to some misguided sectarian agenda and paranoia!
It is so obvious to me why people are scared of Nichiren Buddhism. No wonder they don't want to have anything to do with us when this is the kind of pettiness, meanness, sectarianism, and total lack of compassion that has come to characterize Nichiren Buddhism.
What drives me nuts of course is that it is not Nichiren Buddhism per se, it is a certain group within a certain group or some individuals within certain groups (though they all seem to be members or ex-members of the same group) that acts like this. But they manage to scare off everyone else by creating a really horrible reputation for us all.
Do Zen Buddhists ever act like this? I have never experienced any Soto or Rinzai people ever acting with such spite and malice.
Do Won Buddhists ever act like this? I have never experienced any Won Buddhist ever acting with such spite and malice.
Do Thich Nhat Hanh followers ever act like this? I have never experienced any admirers of Thich Nhat Hanh ever acting with such spite or malice.
Do followers of the Dalai Lama ever act like this? I have never experienced any followers of the Dalai Lama ever acting quite this spiteful and malicious. Occasionally I have met some that are arrogant and condescending as all get out yes, but I know the Dalai Lama has never condoned such attitudes.
But there is one Buddhist group, or group that claims to be Buddhist whose members do act this way - and it isn't even a matter of surprise. There are some good hearted members of this group - but I guarantee you that they are either on the fringes, have found a small bubble of sanity within that group, or they have to some extent compromised their principles or at least keep their own counsel to themselves to the org at large. And in the meantime, no one else who comes into contact with Nichiren Buddhism bothers to differentiate between the various kinds and ways of being Nichiren Buddhists. We are all tarred by this behavior.
A couple of months ago I was contacted by a Japanese-American woman in the Bay Area who was curious about Nichiren Shu. Her mother was from Japan and had passed away within the last year. The mother had been Nichiren Shu. But the daughter explained that her mother was so worried about this other group that I have been talking about that she preferred to just stay away from other Buddhists. When even people from Nichiren Shu from Japan are wary of Nichiren Buddhism because of this other group then you know the damage that this other group has done is considerable.
Did I ever mention that my own in-laws in Japan were originally worried when they heard that I was a Nichiren Buddhist? They weren't so upset that I was a gaijin (not that I ever heard) or that I wasn't some fast track executive or anything like that. They were worried that I was a member of this other group. When they found out that I was with Nichiren Shu and found out that Nichiren Shu was a legitimate traditional school of Japanese Buddhism that had absolutely no connection to this other group, then they were put at ease. But I learned then that even to the average Japanese, Nichiren Buddhism as a whole has been tainted by the actions of this group (which has its own political party in Japan) and the behavior of the people in this group.
Once I brought my good Dharma friend Rev. Bokin Kim to a meeting of this other group so she could see for herself what they were like. They spent the meeting telling her (a lifelong Buddhist, the daughter of the 3rd Prime Master of Won Buddhism, and a very dedicated Buddhist nun) that only they knew "true Buddhism" and that if you chant you can get anything you want - money, promotions, relationships, cars, etc... Afterwords, Rev. Kim sadly shook her head and said "those people are very confused."
Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei