Helden

Recent incidents in Canada - such as the one I was describing yesterday, for example - have made me perhaps a little perverse about Remembrance Day.

Now, don't get me wrong: I'm a family researcher, so I'm more than aware of war's impact on families, with no rosy, gauzy perceptions of it.

War kills people. It tears families apart. It wounds psyches. It cripples bodies.

So, I headed off on Remembrance Day afternoon, with the Resident Fan Boy and younger daughter in tow, to see JoJo Rabbit. It was on my want-to-see list, and all I knew about it was that it's about a small boy living somewhere in Nazi Germany, who has an invisible friend - Adolf Hitler.

Not the real Adolf Hitler, obviously. This trailer actually gives you a fairly good idea of the movie -- except it gets darker, of course.

Young JoJo is ten, so eligible for the junior division of the Hitler Youth, the Deutsches Jungvolk. Unable to remember a Germany without Hitler, JoJo's room is plastered with posters, the common sight of bodies strung up in the town square elicits a small boy's "yuck", and he thinks the summer of 1944 will be the best one ever.

As he charges off with his mates to "Komm, gib mir deine Hand" (the Beatles' original recording, which I have on CD and digitally), I understood just how surreal and frantic this film was going to be. I'm usually fatally put off by anachronisms, however in the current political climate - and climate crisis - this seems perfectly appropriate to a satiric nightmare, which is hilarious and terrifying by turns. It is, after all, a strange and diabolical time, seen entirely from the viewpoint of a ten-year-old boy, who has no idea of what his protective mother is really up to.

As events wheel into early 1945, things get bleak pretty fast.

Younger daughter was a bit traumatized by how JoJo Rabbit comes by his nickname, but delighted by the closing song - David Bowie's German rendition of "Heroes". (Yes, that works too.)

The impressive cast includes Sam Rockwell, Scarlett Johansson, Rebel Wilson, and Stephen Merchant, playing the role he was born to play. The two young leads are marvellous.

And the dream-pal Hitler? Played by the Maori/Jewish screenwriter Taika Waititi, as a middle finger flipped in the direction of those crazy Nazis - who, undoubtedly won't take the hint.

Let yourself go

Two days in and I'm already cheating.

I do love this.

(The Laurel and Hardy clip is from Bonnie Scotland [1935]; "The Jean Genie" is, of course, off David Bowie's 1973 album Aladdin Sane.)

So swishy

With weekly excursions to Pic-a-Flic, I've been seeing a lot of films that I always meant to see. Last night, it was The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou - a strange film, even for Wes Anderson. I had decided on it, because I showed Moonrise Kingdom to the Resident Fan Boy last week, and he had loved it.

Life Aquatic almost lost me in the first half, but things picked up. The film ends with a tribute to the march that finishes the 1984 flick The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, which, frankly, is the only memorable thing about Buckaroo Banzai.

Anyway, at the close of The Life Aquatic, Bill Murray hoists a young boy on his shoulders as the credits roll. As he struts determinedly toward his cartoonish boat, he is joined, one by one, by the other cast members. The gentleman in the beige jacket joining the group at just past the two-minute-mark is none other than Bud Cort, the star of one of my all-time favourites Harold and Maude (1971)

I loved the song they were strutting to, but didn't recognize it. All through the film, a crew-member sings various David Bowie classics in Portuguese, sometimes to a bossa nova rhythm. However, this finale was accompanied by the original recording of Bowie himself singing "Queen Bitch", which is from one of his earlier albums Hunky Dory. Apparently, Bowie wrote "Queen Bitch" after going to see the Velvet Underground in New York on his first trip to the United States, not realizing that Lou Reed had left the band.

This made me realize why I was responding to the song - it's very much like the Underground's "Sweet Jane".


I'm up on the eleventh floor and I'm watching the cruisers below
He's down on the street and he's trying hard to pull sister Flo
Oh, my heart's in the basement, my weekend's at an all-time low
'Cause she's hoping to score, so I can't see her letting him go
Walk out of her heart, walk out of her mind, oh not her

She's so swishy in her satin and tat
In her frock coat and bipperty-bopperty hat
Oh God, I could do better than that

She's an old-time ambassador of sweet-talking, night-walking games
And she's known in the darkest clubs for pushing ahead of the dames
If she says she can do it, then she can do it, she don't make false claims
But she's a queen and such are queens that your laughter is sucked in their brains
Now she's leading him on, and she'll lay him right down
Yes, she's leading him on, and she'll lay him right down
But it could have been me, yes, it could have been me
Why didn't I say, why didn't I say, no, no, no

So I lay down a while and I gaze at my hotel wall
Oh, the cot is so cold it don't feel like no bed at all
Yeah, I lay down a while and I look at my hotel wall
And he's down on the street, so I throw both his bags down the hall
And I'm phoning a cab 'cause my stomach feels small
There's a taste in my mouth and it's no taste at all

Bud Cort, incidentally, has a connection with the sort of arts scene that Bowie was witnessing on that trip. He was in a play, and living with someone whose name escapes me, who was either with Andy Warhol or the Velvet Underground (or both).

Look at those cavemen go

In this days when singers do auto-tuned eardrum-splitting calisthenics, I especially appreciate a vocalist who demonstrates beautiful dynamic control, to say nothing of a convincing muted trumpet imitation.

And yes, you can get off my lawn.

Irrevocable

It's irrevocably January.  I rummaged in the early morning darkness of our study, and caught myself trying to make out the outline of the Christmas tree which isn't there.  Not much later, I stood at the bedroom window and watched the city worker dragging the corpses of our neighbour's tree and our own -- still beautifully shaped and bushy -- to the waiting truck where he pushed a lever and they were sucked out of sight.

Early yesterday morning, I was still in bed when the Resident Fan Boy shuffled in from the bathroom and informed me that David Bowie had died.  Like millions of others, I didn't believe it.  Bowie had been all over the internet; he'd just had a birthday and an album released.  As the news was confirmed, I thought: Well, he'd know how to keep his illness private.  (Evidently, by telling people on a need-to-know basis.  And few people needed to know.)

The day was spent like many others spent it:  elder daughter got a Bowie playlist off Spotify and, being a millennial, downloaded Labyrinth to watch on her laptop in her bedroom.  I resorted to YouTube, because I don't actually own any Bowie albums; I liked his music, but not enough to purchase it.  I was therefore astonished at how sad I felt. I suppose it really hit me yesterday how ubiquitous Bowie was:  his music was everywhere, his influence was pervasive.  If you look at any rundown of his long career -- and those were all over the news -- you see a long stretch of collaborations that put him into close contact with most of the successful rock musicians of the past forty years.

However, he's also etched into the memories of those of us who will never be famous.  I remember classmates dressing like him, I attended countless wedding receptions blaring "Modern Love", saw television shows based on his songs.  One of the first YouTube videos I sought out was "Suffragette City", a favourite dance tune at the "SUB Pub", in the basement of the Student Union Building at the University of Victoria.

I've always been a bit of a rule-follower, so I felt a rebellious thrill in shouting out "AAaaaaaaw.....WHAM BAM THANK YOU MA'AM!" (The blond dancer is none other than Montreal's own Louise Lecavalier of LA LA LA Human Steps - Eduard Lock choreographed this particular 1990 tour.)

I looked up another one of my favourite Bowie songs. This is "Blue Jeans" from the comical short film "Jazzin' for Blue Jeans" - in which Bowie plays a loser called Vic trying to impress a pretty girl by taking her to see a drug-addled rock star named Screaming Lord Byron -- also played by Bowie.

The 20-minute film from which this is taken is mildly amusing, but it's fun to watch Bowie take pot-shots at himself.

However, I liked Bowie best in collaboration. After Freddy Mercury's death, an epic memorial concert was held for him at Wembley Stadium on Easter Monday, April 20th, 1992 - this was three days before elder daughter was born. Heavily pregnant, I watched tributes from Extreme and Lisa Stansfield - yes, I know.

The whole atmosphere of the concert changed when Bowie took over for his segment, which started with "Under Pressure", which he had written and recorded with Queen in 1981. This is Bowie's performance with Annie Lennox. It nearly blew me off the bed; I can't imagine what it was like to have been there.

If you listen carefully, you can hear the Wembley audience recreating Mercury's scat-singing perfectly.

Elder daughter, in utero, must have wondered what the noise was when I saw Ian Hunter taking the stage next. I'm a massive Mott the Hoople fan, even when not nearly nine months pregnant, and I understand that Joe Elliot and Phil Collen of Def Leppard are as well. You can see them singing back-up to "All the Young Dudes" (written by Bowie and Mott's greatest hit), and looking as if they were the ones who had died and gone to heaven. Playing guitar is Mick Ronson, a musician strongly associated with with both Bowie and Hunter. A little over a year later, he would be dead of liver cancer, which is what eventually killed Bowie himself.

If you've taken the opportunity to watch the whole video, you'll see that Bowie finished the set with another of my favourites, "Heroes". Looking back nearly 24 years, I wondered how his sudden kneeling to recite the Lord's Prayer would have been received by the largely atheistic London audience of today, even when delivered by the likes of Bowie.

Bowie sang of heaven in his final video "Lazarus", which is being described in the press and online as a "final gift to his fans". I don't know about that; it looks more like something Bowie was working through for himself, using his art as a palliative. I was far more spooked by the haunting ten minutes of "Blackstar", which starts with the remains of an astronaut who could be Major Tom of "Space Oddity" from 1970, and moves through images of shaking suffering interspersed with a sort of "Rites of Spring" dancing. At the 4:45 mark, the song shifts into a tune that is more identifiable as a Bowie song, and we see three scarecrows who resemble Jesus and the two thieves at Golgotha (which is supposed to mean "place of the skull").

Mesmerized and disturbed by the images, I was startled when it all faded away. Rather like Bowie himself.

It's a bleak way to begin the new year, but here in Hades, January is always bleak. Perhaps it is better to follow David Bowie's example. Hold on to what is yours, even if that something is pain and suffering - keep it private and precious, and share it only with those closest to you.

Then, make it as beautiful as you can and share it with the world.