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back-and-totheleft · 3 years

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‘There’s still a presence out there reminding people not to speak about JFK’s killing’

Oliver Stone is not a fan of “cancel culture”. “Of course I despise it,” the Oscar winning filmmaker says, as if utterly amazed that anyone needs to ask him such a dumb question. “I am sure I’ve been cancelled by some people for all the comments I’ve made…. it’s like a witch hunt. It’s terrible. American censorship in general, because it is a declining, defensive, empire, it (America) has become very sensitive to any criticism. What is going on in the world with YouTube and social media,” he rants. “Twitter is the worst. They’ve banned the ex-President of the United States. It’s shocking!” he says, referring to Donald Trump’s removal from the micro-blogging platform.

It’s a Saturday lunchtime in the restaurant of the Marriott Hotel on the Croisette in Cannes. The American director is in town for the festival premiere this week of his new feature documentary JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass, in which he yet again pores over President John F Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963.

“I am a pin cushion for American-Russian peace relations… I had four f***ing vaccines: two Sputniks and two Pfizers,” Stone gestures at his arm. The rival super-powers may remain deeply suspicious of one another, but Stone is loading himself up with potions from both sides of the old Iron Curtain.

He has recently been travelling in Russia (hence the Sputnik jabs) where he has been making a new documentary about how nuclear power can save humanity. He also recently completed a film about Kazakhstan’s former president Nursultan Nazarbayev which – like his interviews with Vladimir Putin – has been roundly ridiculed for its deferential, softly-softly approach toward a figure widely regarded as a ruthless despot.

Dressed in a blue polo shirt, riffing away about the English football team one moment and his favourite movies the next, laughing constantly, the 74-year-old Oscar-winning director of Platoon, Wall Street, Natural Born Killers et al is a far cheerier presence than his reputation as a purveyor of dark conspiracy thrillers might suggest. He is also very outspoken. For all his belligerence, though, Stone isn’t as thick-skinned as you might imagine. I wonder if he was hurt by the scorn that came his way when his feature film JFK was released in 1991.

“I was more of a younger man. It was painful to me,” the director sighs as he remembers being attacked by such admired figures as newscaster Walter Cronkite and Hollywood power broker Jack Valenti for listening to the “hallucinatory bleatings” of former New Orleans DA Jim Garrison when JFK came out. “It was quite shocking actually because I thought the murder was behind us. I did think there was a feeling that 30 years later, we can look at this thing again without getting excited. But I was way wrong.”

Garrison, of course, was the real-life figure portrayed by Kevin Costner in the film; he was the original proponent of the theory that the CIA were involved in the killing of the US president, after his 1966 investigation. Garrison wrote the book On the Trail of the Assassins, on which the movie was partly based.

Even the director’s fiercest detractors will find it hard to dismiss the evidence he has assembled about the JFK assassination in the new documentary. Once I’d seen it and heard him hold forth, I came away thinking that only flat-earthers can possibly still believe that Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy all on his own. It’s that convincing.

Stone blitzes you with facts and figures about the Kennedy killing and its aftermath. At times, he himself seems to be suffering from information overload. “I am sorry. There are so many people,” he apologises for not immediately remembering the name of Kennedy’s personal physician, George Burkley, who was present both at Parkland Hospital, where Kennedy was first taken, and then at Bethesda, where the autopsy took place. Burkley was strangely reticent when giving evidence to the Warren Commission.

“I think there’s still a presence out there which reminds people not to speak. I’ve heard that in, of all places, Russia,” Stone says. He was startled to discover that the Russians knew all about his new documentary long before it was discussed in the mainstream press. “They said, ‘We heard about it.’ I said, ‘How?’ They said, ‘We have our contacts in the American intelligence business. They are not very happy about it.’”

Stone believes that no US president since Kennedy died has been “able to go up against this militarised sector of our economy”. Even Trump “backed down at the last second” and declined to release all the relevant documents relating to the assassination. “He announced, ‘I’m going to free it up, blah blah blah, big talk, and then a few hours before, he caved to CIA National Security again.”

The veteran filmmaker expresses his frustrations at historians like Robert Caro, author of a huge (and hugely respected) multi-volume biography of President Lyndon Johnson, for ignoring the evidence that has been turned up about the assassination.

“I can’t say [LBJ] was involved in the assassination,” explains Stone, “but it certainly suited him that Kennedy was not there anymore and he covered up by appointing the Warren Commission and doing all the things he did.”

Stone tried to cast Marlon Brando in JFK in the role as the deep throat source Mr X, eventually played by Donald Sutherland.

“I realise now I am grateful that he turned it down because he knew better than I that he would make 20 minutes out of that 14-minute monologue and it wouldn’t have worked.”

Nevertheless, he filled the film with famous faces. He thought that having familiar actors would make it easier for audiences to engage with what was an immensely complicated story.

Getting Stone to stop talking about JFK is like trying to pull a bone from a mastiff’s jaws. To change the subject slightly, I ask if he is still in touch with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. He is and is utterly horrified at how Assange is being treated, especially given that Siggi the Hacker, a key witness in the extradition case against Assange, admitted recently that he lied. Stone praises Assange’s partner Stella Morris as “the best wife you could ever have. She really is smart, she’s a lawyer … he has two children. He can’t even touch them or see them. It’s barbaric. It indicates America is declining faster than we know. It is just cutting off dissent.”

The mood lightens when I invite Stone to discuss some of his favourite films. He recently tweeted a list of these, which included Darling starring Julie Christie, Joseph Losey’s Eva starring Stanley Baker and Jeanne Moreau, and Houseboat, a frothy comedy starring Cary Grant and Sophia Loren. “I love films, always have. People don’t know that side of me. I could go on forever.”

Between his darker and more contentious efforts, Stone has made a few genre films himself, for example the underrated thriller U-Turn starring Sean Penn and Jennifer Lopez. He notes, though, that even when he tried a sports movie, he ended up right back in the firing line. The NFL was furious about his 1999 American Football film, Any Given Sunday. “They (the NFL) are arrogant, very rich people who close down any dissent, so I had to change uniforms and names… but they got the point.”

Last year, Stone published the first volume of his autobiography, Chasing the Light, which took him from childhood up to his Oscar triumph with Platoon. It was well received but it didn’t make nearly a big enough splash for his liking. “There was a curtain of silence about that. Maybe it is Covid… it was not reviewed by many people,” he says. “I wish the timing had been better. The publisher was terrible. They didn’t really promote anything. So now I have to start over again if I am going to do a second book, which I would love to do. But I have to find the right publisher.”

The book contains a barbed account of Stone’s experiences as a young screenwriter working in London for British director Alan Parker and producer David Puttnam on Midnight Express. “I wrote about it in the book, so you got my point of view. They were not very friendly people. I gave my criticism of Parker that he had a chip on his shoulder. He was from a poor side of the English. There is this phenomenon you see in England of hating the upper classes until they approve of you.”

No, they didn’t stay in touch. “And Puttnam is a Lord, right? He reminds me of Tony Blair. He is such a weasel.” For once, Stone feels he has overstepped the mark. He doesn’t want to call Puttnam a weasel after all. “Put it this way, Tony Blair is a weasel. I wouldn’t trust Tony Blair. Puttnam is a supporter of Blair. Let’s leave it at that.”

On matters English, he isn’t that keen on soccer either. He watched the semi-final between England and Denmark but had no intention of tuning into the final.

“Soccer is a different kind of game. It’s a different aesthetic. It is constant movement. The United States game allows you to re-group after every play and go into a huddle and so it becomes about strategy. I still enjoy it although people think I am brutal.”

Ask him why he so relishes American Football and he replies that he “grew up with violence in America … we were banging – cowboys and Indians, a lot of killing and that stuff. How do you get away from that? We weren’t playing with dolls.”

Stone’s feelings about the US are deeply ambivalent. He is old enough to remember a time in the late 1940s and early 1950s when “everything in America was golden” and part of him still seems to love the country but his mother was French and he talks about the US as a nation now in near terminal decline.

Perhaps surprisingly, his real political hero isn’t JFK. It’s the former President of France, Charles de Gaulle. “He said no to NATO and he said no to America. He understood the dangers of being a satellite country to America. You have no power in Europe. Don’t kid yourself. The EU is just an artificial body that was amazingly stupid in cutting off Russia and cutting off China too now.”

He doesn’t much like Boris Johnson either. “Boris, listen. He’d simply throw you in jail in a second.” He rails against the English for holding Assange in Belmarsh prison.

When he is not on a crusade or unravelling a conspiracy, Stone relaxes through Buddhist meditation. “Moderation in all things,” the man who came up with the phrase “greed is right, greed works” says with no evident sense of irony. He enjoys hanging out with his friends. “I have a nice life. I’m lucky,” he says before quickly adding, “I wish I had been more honoured and respected in my lifetime, but it seems that I took a course that is in conflict with the American Empire.”

Stone’s films have had relatively few strong female characters. Ask if he welcomes the #MeToo movement and the challenging of old gender norms and he gives a typically contrary answer. “It cuts both ways, though. There are reasons for patriarchy through the centuries,” he says. “Tribes tend to have a strong leader. You need strong leaders, but I do see the feminine impulse as being important, especially when situations become too militant. The feminine impulse, I’m talking about the maternal impulse not the Hillary Clinton/Margaret Thatcher version of feminism. They’re men. They’re not women,” he says. “I don’t want women in politics who want to be men. If a woman is a woman, she should be a woman and bring her maternalism. It’s a leavening influence.”

The director deplores the rush to judge historical figures about past misdeeds from a contemporary point of view. “I am conservative in that way… don’t expect to rejudge the entire society based on your new values.”

He met with Harvey Weinstein in Cannes a few years ago to discuss a potential Guantanamo Bay TV series. “At that point, maybe he knew he was on the ropes; he was delightfully charming and humble.” The project was scuppered by the scandal that that engulfed the former Miramax boss, who is now behind bars as a convicted sex offender. Stone’s gripes with Weinstein are less to do with his sexual offences than with the way that he attacked films like Born on the Fourth of July and Saving Private Ryan to boost his own movies.

“The press loved him [Weinstein]. Don’t forget, they loved him in the 1990s,” he says, remembering the disingenuous way in which Weinstein portrayed himself as the underdog taking on the big, bad Hollywood system.

“I think he robbed Cruise of the Oscar, frankly,” Stone huffs at the intensive Weinstein lobbying which saw Daniel Day-Lewis win the Academy Award for Best for My Left Foot, denying Tom Cruise for Born on the Fourth of July in the process.

Stone acknowledges his status in Hollywood has diminished. “All that’s gone. The people have changed,” he says of the days when the studios doted on him and his films were regularly awards contenders. Now, he’ll often finance his work out of Europe. He is developing a new feature film (he won’t say what it is). “Never say die, never say it’s over,” he says of his career.

Stone is based in Los Angeles and also has “a place in New York”. During the pandemic, he still managed to travel to Russia to make his nuclear power/clean energy documentary. “I got my shots over there because the EU is so f***ing stupid,” he says of the of the Europeans’ refusal to recognise the Sputnik vaccine. “It’s ridiculous, part of the political madness of this time.”

Now, he is putting all his energy into his new documentary about nuclear power. He waves away the idea that the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters show what can go wrong – they were accidents.

“Accidents you learn from. If there were not a few crashes, how would you fly?” he says. It’s a line that somehow seems to express his entire philosophy of life.

-Geoffrey Macnab interviews Oliver Stone, The Independent, Jul 15 2021 [x]

#oliver stone #jfk #jfk: through the looking glass #the independent #julian assange #boris johnson #david puttnam #harvey weinstein #born on the fourth of july #covid19 #vaccine #chasing the light #cannes film festival

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tiawritesgood · 5 years

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Becoming Owen: Chapter 2

Owen wished the training room had couches.

Not so he could sit, but because fabric would dampen the sound of the ten barking dogs in kennels along the far wall. Each high pitched yelp bounced off the walls and into Owen’s ears. He glanced around at the other interns, and none flinched. He supposed he would either get used to the barking, or he’d go deaf. Either would be fine with him at that point. “Welcome!” a young woman called from behind a short table. Her smile filled her face. “You must be the new intern from Indiana U. We’re glad to have you on board!” Owen closed the gap between them and held out his hand to shake. “Owen Grady.” “Tessa McCugh,” she said. “I’m the president of this branch. It’s nice to meet you.” The university set Owen up with an internship in his field of study: animal behavior. All of the kenneled dogs were up for adoption at the humane society, and he and the other interns would work with them on basic training. A dog who could sit was more easily placed than one who couldn’t. Tessa gathered the eight other interns into a circle. “Most of you are familiar with how this works, but we do have a newcomer. Everyone welcome Owen Grady to the team!” The interns waved and nodded in his direction. They all seemed to be his age or younger. A couple looked like they might still be in high school. He’d read on his welcome packet that you had to be at least eighteen, so they were probably seniors who needed community service credit to graduate. Each week they worked with a new set of dogs, so at least Owen wouldn’t be too far behind. He’d watched enough dog training videos to have a basic idea of how it worked. This should be a breeze. “Each of you will be working with one dog for the next two hours. I have treat pouches and treats for each of you, and we’ll start off as a group, but you will be working pretty much one on one with the dogs as they get the hang of each basic command. We’re working on sit, lay down, paw, and stay today. These tricks tend to catch potential pet owners’ interests when they see the dogs. It’s a way for them to show off a bit and hopefully get adopted.” Tessa gave each of the interns a card with a name on it. Owen’s read, “Oscar.” He found the kennel with a matching name and stared down at his buddy for the night. Oscar was a white pit bull. The dog sat with his mouth wide open in an excited smile. Following the lead of the other interns, Owen opened the kennel and attached a leash to Oscar’s collar. To his surprise, the dog didn’t try to run or pull away. He stared up at Owen with expecting eyes. “Oscar was brought to us after his owner was killed. He’s intimidating, being a pit, but he’s the sweetest boy. I have no doubt he’ll get adopted. In fact, he has three applications outstanding already.” “Then why is he here? Doesn’t sound like he needs to show off at all.” “A pit bull who can sit, stay, and lay down will be adopted. One that is too excited won’t. The applications are in, but he hasn’t had any visits just yet. We want to be sure he’s ready.” “He will be,” Owen promised. He led Oscar over to a quiet area in the room. The interns were spread out, far enough away to keep the dogs calm, but close enough to hear Tessa’s instructions. “First, we’re going to teach the dogs to sit. This is a simple command and most won’t have any trouble. Use this hand motion,” Tessa said, gesturing with her palm facing upward. Owen had seen this command a million times. “And also a verbal command. You may need to lure the dogs into a sit the first few times using a treat like this.” She demonstrated with her shelter dog, a small shepherd. She held a treat to the dog’s nose and lifted it up. The dog tried to jump for it, but she pulled the treat away and repeated the motion until it sat. She rewarded him with the piece of hot dog. “Got it?” Everyone murmured yes, and they got to work. Oscar was already sitting, so Owen had to coax him out of the position only to get him back into it. “Sit.” Oscar obeyed immediately. It looked like his previous owner had already taught him this trick. Owen glanced around the room and saw that almost all of the dogs were already familiar with the ‘sit’ command. That made sense; a lot of the dogs were abandoned, but for the most part, dogs are taught to at least ‘sit’ by their owners. After ten minutes of sitting, Tessa called the group back together and went over how to teach down. Oscar nailed that command, too. They had twenty minutes to learn this one before Tessa started them on ‘stay.’ This one was a lot harder for Oscar. He saw the hot dog on the ground and figured it was there for him to clean up. It took the first fifteen of their allotted thirty minutes to get a single repetition, but after that, Oscar had it down. “Good boy!” Owen said after five good ‘stays’ in a row. He petted the sweet dog, whose tail wagged excitedly from the touch. “You’re a natural.” Owen jumped. Tessa left her shelter dog with a younger woman at the front of the room. She’d shown up between lay down and stay, and Tessa introduced her as her apprentice, Emma. The help allowed Tessa to wander around checking on her other students. “Oscar is the natural.” Tessa smiled. “You know, Emma’s apprenticeship is over next week and I’m on the lookout for another. Is that something you’d be interested in?” Owen’s eyes widened. “Absolutely, but I’m not sure I have time. Between this internship and all my school work…” Tessa stopped him. “We can give you internship credit for the apprenticeship. I’ll talk with your adviser, he’s an old friend of mine. If you’re interested, I can work it out.” “I am very interested. Thank you so much, Tessa.” She left to finish her rounds and Owen’s head spun. He knew he would need an apprenticeship to get more hands on animal behavior learning, but he never imagined one would land on his lap. He thought he’d have to work over the summer to get one. He couldn’t wait to tell his dad. “Okay, class, let’s take a break and let the dogs socialize. Keep an eye on them and break up any fights. They usually spend time together outside, so we know they all get along, but you never know what might happen.” Owen unleashed Oscar and the dog bounded over to the shepherd Tessa had been working with. The two smiled at each other and ran around the room like best friends. Watching them, Owen hoped a miracle would happen, and the boys would be adopted out together. If he weren’t living in a dorm room, Owen would adopt them himself. After a thirty minute playtime, the dogs were leashed back up and they went through one last command: paw. This was Owen’s favorite, because it was more fun than practical. Oscar seemed to like it, too. He got it after a few repetitions. Tessa called for the class to put their dogs back in the kennels. Owen kissed Oscar’s head and walked away, but it was hard. He wanted nothing more than to give the sweet boy a home. All he could hope for was that one of those applications worked out. “That was a great class everyone. Thank you for all your help, and I look forward to seeing you all next week. Leave your snack pouches with Emma. Have a great night!” Emma took Owen’s snack pouch with a scowl. “You won’t last a week as an apprentice.” He laughed. “You’re right, I’ll last the full four months.” Emma scoffed. “Good luck.” “Thanks!” Owen didn’t look back when he exited the building. Instructors never kept apprentices longer than their term, so it’s not like he was taking her job or anything. He had no idea what Emma’s issue was, but he wouldn’t worry about it. Dog training wasn’t his specific goal, but it would get him to where he needed to be. Working with other animal behaviorists to explore how animals work and what they can be trained to do was his dream. If he had to last four months training shelter dogs to get there, he would do so happily. When he got back to his dorm room, Owen was exhausted, but he called his girlfriend, Samantha, anyway. “Hey, Sammy,” he said. “Hey, tiger. You sound tired.” He yawned. “Long day. What are you up to?” “Ugh, homework. You?” “Just got done with my internship. You still want to hang tonight?” Samantha sighed. “I’m sorry, can I take a rain check? I wasn’t expecting to get any actual work today but I ended up with two different assignments and I’m working tomorrow so I won’t have any time to get them done.” “That’s fine, I get it. I miss you though.” Owen could hear the smile in his girlfriend’s voice. “I miss you, too. Are we still on for Saturday?” “Yeah, sounds good. I’ll let you get your work done. Talk tomorrow?” “Sure. Night, Owen.” “Night, Sammy.” After he hung up, he went through his usual night routine before jumping onto his barely-long-enough dorm bed. It took less than five minutes for him to be out like a light.

#jurassic world #jurassic the new world #jurassic world fallen kingdom #fallen kingdom #owen grady #chris pratt #owen #grady #backstory #becoming owen

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radiojamming · 6 years

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Cody/Jacob - soulmates au

ohhh buddy u have no idea how much i’ve mused on this exact thing

(this got so fucking long i am so sorry and yet i am not)

- - -

For the few months that Jacob Seed actually remembers his family owning a TV, he notices a few things.

He’s about six years old, leaning up against his mother’s legs while she patches the elbow on one of his father’s work jackets (she’s always, always patching things; they never buy anything new). Joseph is sitting on the floor beside the TV set, playing with a worn down wooden horse toy that they bought at a garage sale, and he babbles to it in his own language that is half English and half two-going-on-three year old chatter. Their father is out working late again, which means they have a few hours to watch whatever they want, rather than the loud televangelists that he likes.

On the screen, in shivering monochrome, a greaser bobs his way into a diner, smirking at a young lady in a poodle skirt leaning up against a jukebox. He says, “Hey, sweetcheeks. You got a name to go with that pretty face?”

The girl rolls her eyes and the audience laughs. Jacob doesn’t get it.

“Martha,” the girl finally drawls.

“What a coinky-dink!” says the greaser. He shoulders off his leather jacket and rolls up a shirt sleeve, revealing an entire list of names on his right arm. Soulmarks, Jacob knows. He knows them from TV and from what Pastor Jim talks about at church sometimes. He doesn’t really know what they are, except some way to find out who you’re going to marry. But he does know that they show up different on everyone. Names are common. His mother has a name on her ankle, and it isn’t his father’s.

On the screen, the greaser runs a finger over his arm before he settles on a name. “Gee, Martha! Guess you n’ me are just meant to be together!” he exclaims, all but shoving his arm in her face.

Martha looks at him with thinly-veiled disgust before reaching over and dumping a glass bottle of Coke on his arm. Then, she reaches up while the greaser is stunned and the audience is howling in laughter, and she uses her shirt sleeve to wipe the names off his arm until they’re just an inky mess.

“Nice try,” she says levelly before turning on heel and walking out the door to the audience whooping and laughing.

Jacob sits in slack-jawed awe while Joseph chirps out something that sounds like, “Pecan!” which Jacob thinks is the name of the horse. Then, Jacob leans back against his mother’s legs, tilting his head up so she looks upside-down in his vision. “Mama, can you wipe soulmarks off?” he asks.

His mother gives him an upside-down smile and shakes her head. “No, baby. They don’t come off. He was just bein’ silly.”

“Oh.” Jacob tilts his head back down as a commercial comes on for Oscar Mayer bologna. He looks to his right, seeing the last few letters of his mother’s soulmate’s name peeking up above her sock. All he sees is -EY in weird writing. He looks down at himself, at his shorts and bare knees and tube socks with two neat red lines near the top. Then, he looks down at his hands, his wrists, and even his elbows. “How come I don’t have one?” he finally asks.

His mother laughs, and Jacob’s too young to realize that it’s one of the rarest sounds in the world. She reaches down and runs a hand over his hair, red like his dad’s. “You will soon, baby. Sometimes it takes a little while.”

He’s also too young to realize that some people never get them.

- - -

They switch churches when Jacob’s just shy of ten years old. His skin is still bare of anything like a soulmark, although he has enough freckles, scars, and bruises to last him a lifetime.

His dad doesn’t like Pastor Jim’s preaching anymore, and Jacob’s aware that they had some kind of argument about the way his dad treats his mom. His dad swears that it’s because God isn’t in Pastor Jim’s preaching, so they end up going to a Baptist church that’s built so close to the Coosa River that it looks like it’s going to fall right in. It’s the kind of church that has something called a revival every few weekends, where they set up a big white tent near the river and dunk people in the water while yelling about Jesus for a few hours. Jacob was baptized awhile ago, but he still watches in stunned silence when their new pastor, Pastor Richard, hollers and waves his arm like a ghost in a madhouse before dunking old ladies and young guys and a whole gaggle of little kids.

And Pastor Richard has a lot to say about soulmarks.

He smacks the Bible a lot when he talks, and goes on for ages about how only a man and a woman can marry over soulmarks, or how soulmarks were made on Adam’s skin from the dirt he slept in while God took his rib to make Eve. During one sermon, someone says something about having multiple marks, and Pastor Richard goes on such a screaming tangent that Joseph starts to whimper in his mother’s arms. There’s no such thing as multiple, he snarls. That’s not how God’s love works.

Jacob looks down at his own skin again, peeking out under the sweat-soaked white button-up shirt his dad makes him wear every Sunday. He sees freckles on his wrists and not much else.

He almost wants to ask about people who don’t have marks, but he’s afraid of Pastor Richard shouting at him, too.

- - -

The next few years make it hard to think about soulmarks or much of anything except how to keep himself and his brothers alive. Lots of things happen in a blur; his dad getting taken away in a patrol car, his mom taken in the other direction in an ambulance while she stares at nothing, and then the ugly black Cadillac that comes to take them away in a third direction. There are stark white offices, bunk beds in rooms that smell like fresh paint and sawdust, stacks of papers that Jacob has to sign sometimes, and what feels like hundreds of people with faces that Jacob is never going to remember, all pretending to be sad on his behalf.

He holds John through most of it, trying not to think too hard about his parents or the life they left behind. Sometimes he thinks about the name on his mom’s ankle, or the tattoo-like splotch on the back of his dad’s left wrist, or how the two of them were never meant to be together.

Sometimes, he thinks if he doesn’t have a mark, then–

He stops himself there, because otherwise, he just gets himself upset. He can’t do that in front of his brothers when they need him the most.

Then, they get adopted by the farmer couple in Rome, and before Jacob knows it, he doesn’t have time to think about soulmates and marks at all.

- - -

He’s in juvie when he gets something like a mark. Maybe.

It’s one of the younger kids, Toby or Tony or something, with the long Italian last name who was born with two fingers on his right hand fused together. He follows Jacob around like a lost puppy, along with a few other kids who quickly learn that Jacob Seed punches like a fucking boxer when one of the older kids picks on one of the younger. Toby-or-Tony was one of those kids, after one of the older guys (colloquially known as Forevers, since everyone knows that once they’re out of juvie, they’ll just boomerang right back into prison) gets a few of his buddies started on calling him Lobster Boy. He shoves Toby-or-Tony up against the chain-link fence at the courtyard and makes a big show of seemingly trying to peel his fingers apart, when Jacob (known for his soft voice, massive height, and the fact that he stares people down like a goddamn wolf on the prowl) hauls up behind him and socks the shit out of the guy. Once the guy’s on the ground, bleeding out of the mouth and mewling like a kitten, Jacob saunters away without a word and Toby-or-Tony follows him like he’s magnetized.

And he notices the weird mark on Jacob’s hand first. It’s a splotch of blue-black in near the tip of his left middle finger, and he points at out at lunch one afternoon while Jacob prods at a Salisbury steak which would probably be better suited as a hockey puck then an edible item. Toby-or-Tony watches his hand move before he clears his throat.

“Uh. Jake. You got a little somethin’ on yer…” He makes a throwaway motion towards his hand.

Jacob curls his hand inward enough to see, and furrows his brow at the weird little mark, not quite a quarter of an inch long. It looks like an ink stain, but the last time he touched a pen was in the social worker’s office almost five weeks ago. They only let the kids have pencils in school.

“Huh,” is all he says. He takes the moist towelette they give out with the lunches and tries to wipe it off. It stays in place, not blurred or faded in the least. He blinks at it, then down at the towelette which is as clean as it was when he took it out of the package.

Toby-or-Tony gives him a lopsided grin. “You get a tattoo from Kev or what?” he asks, referring to Kevin-in-the-bathroom, who gives kids tattoos using ink from a broken pen and a fork he stole from lunch ages ago.

“Fuck no,” Jacob replies gruffly, shoving the towelette aside. “I’m not that stupid.” And it’s forgotten in the course of him trying to saw the steak in half, failing, and then flipping it onto Toby-or-Tony’s plate, who retches a little at the sight of the alarmingly gray gravy trail it leaves behind.

It’s forgotten, for a little while, until Jacob stands in the showers and looks down at it again. It might be a trick of the waxy light in the bathroom, but he swears it’s gotten bigger.

- - -

When he starts BCT at Fort Benning, Jacob sees the marks on his knees. They’re the size of half dollars, plastered in blue-black on his skin like he just slid through a puddle of ink. They’re nearly identical, too, and he stares at them in confusion and something like awe in that split second of time he has before he has to get back in uniform.

It’s on his mind for only an hour or so before the drill sergeant is screaming in his ear through drills.

Jacob usually only ever has two things on his mind at that point. He still thinks about his brothers, about how the last time he saw them, Joseph was a wiry-looking preteen with owlish eyes and a healing broken nose, and John was crying, clinging onto Joseph’s hand with his big blue eyes so full of tears that he had to blink a dozen times just to see Jacob clearly as the police pulled them apart. He remembers how John kept one of his shirts like a security blanket, keeping the black fabric draped over one arm or clasped against his chest while he slept. Then, Jacob realizes that the more he thinks about that, the more it hurts. But it hurts more to try to forget them at all.

The other thing he thinks about is his future, which rocks back and forth precariously between promising and doomed. Linda, his social worker back in Macon, bluntly told him that his outlook was either prison or the army, but cited his fantastic test scores as a potential for college. He remembers her manicured nails, painfully pink against the black desk, and how she clicked them, one-two-three-four against the surface.

“You get into the army, then college is pretty well paid for,” she had said with a shrug, glancing at the paper with his GPA from the center. He knew it without having to see it, staring with a three and ending with a high number that nearly tips the scale into 4.0. “You ever think about getting a degree?”

He hadn’t. He said as much, followed by, “If I did, could I get custody of my brothers?”

She had shrugged, and it made his heart sink. “Maybe. Maybe not. Most likely not,” she said. “They might be adopted out by now, and even if you did get a degree, there are a lot of other factors that the state would consider.”

And that’s what kicked off his second dwelling point, where he wavered between optimistically thinking about his years of service, a college degree, and the potential of not only seeing his brothers again, but having custody, and then ending up in a gutter somewhere, or possibly prison.

But a third point hardly occurred to him until the stains appeared on his knees, as stark as tattoos.

He sees them again when he goes in to shower after drills, and all he can think of is that TV show and the names on the greaser’s arms, followed by his mother saying sometimes it takes a little while.

And sometimes not to people like him, with no future and no prospects, he had thought.

His mind keeps playing the show and his mother’s words, but the rational part of him, the one that speaks in a voice an awful lot like Linda, says that they’re just bruises.

It’s harder to forget this time, though.

- - -

Once again, things are a blur. A big one, kicked off mercifully by huge doses of pain medication given through syringes in hep-locks and intravenous tubes.

Jacob’s only vaguely aware of what’s going on, trying to piece it all together as he rolls in and out of consciousness like a ship on the waves. He remembers a black expanse of desert in the darkness, then shouting, then a high whistle of something airborne and travelling at high speeds, and then–

Pain.

White-hot and cracking and oozing.

All over his body.

He sees flashes of white, and people behind masks. He sees someone he knows is a surgeon, and then they’re gone. He feels things touching him, more poking and prodding, the smell of something so antiseptic that it stings to breathe it in, and the endless drone of voices in multiple languages, mixing together so it sounds like Joseph’s made-up language from childhood.

Shit, he hasn’t thought about Joseph in awhile.

He doesn’t have time to think much of anything else before he dips under again, and his head is full of strange dreams of little kids sleeping on bales of hay, but then the bales turn to sawdust-smelling bunk beds, and then they’re shoved up against chain-link fences. He dreams of blue-black bruises on his knees, and as he comes back up for a second, smelling sickly-sweet medicine and hearing the distinct beep of an EKG, he has one rogue thought that breaks rank and hauls ass in another direction.

Sorry, he thinks, directing at someone far away. Someone he’s never seen, but in this twilight-phase of sleep and waking, he knows is there. You don’t need this on you. You don’t need to see this.

It doesn’t make sense, and, hell, he isn’t even sure what it means. All he knows is that at some point, his entire body feels like it’s bandaged, and he’s sure he looks like an old Hollywood mummy plastered to a stretcher.

At some point, he thinks he hears someone say, “Second and third degree burns over sixty percent–”, but he might also dream that.

And yet, all he can think still is, Sorry, sorry, sorry.

- - -

He tastes something charred in his mouth as he walks, and his head feels unscrewed from his body, like the bulb of a flashlight not quite screwed in all the way. Here and there, it flickers– He flickers, not quite here, not quite gone. He staggers through the desert on a leg that’s not right, with a ghost trailing behind him, and his head is just–

He’s laughing. He’s fucking laughing, and the sound carries loud and clear over the mountains and the sand and the thin ground cover that promises water that isn’t there. He’s choking on the sound, and when he looks down at his left arm, sleeve torn away to make a bandage for

(for Miller, but God knows he doesn’t need it now)

someone, he sees a long lance of ink-blue trailing down his arm in a dark stripe. he about loses it then, the laughter breaking like glass in his throat.

“God, I’m so fuckin’ sorry,” his voice cracks, riddled here and there with splits and crevasses. He grins in a rictus smile, muscles yanked back so that it feels like he has no control over his face. He smiles like

(like that corpse you left behind, you sick fuck)

a skeleton, and he shivers so hard that it’s a wonder his bones are holding together at all.

He runs his hand down that mark, and up, and down. Over and over until his calloused hand feels as abrasive as sandpaper on his skin. He’s trying to wipe the mark away–

(“No, baby. They don’t come off. He was just bein’ silly.”)

It doesn’t come off. He rubs and rubs until his skin turns red around the blue. He laughs. He screams. He screams and screams and screams.

(Until the Humvee comes after a report from a lookout at a mountain outpost, drawing full alert to the fact that there’s a man in US Army fatigues staggering like a drunk across the desert. And then they pick him up, delirious to the point that he’s laughing in dry heaves of sound, clearly malnourished, vomiting the second they give him water, and chattering madly about ghosts and brothers and someone that he can’t stop apologizing to.)

- - -

Whoever said, ‘All roads lead to Rome,’ needs a solid kick in the jewels, no matter how long they’ve been dead. (He knows it’s from the Golden Milestone. He’s read it, among five hundred other things to occupy his time in the dingy little apartment the Army saw fit to gift him with after an honorable discharge. Fuck them.)

The road’s led him from Hartsfield-Jackson Airport to a miserable walk-up on Beecher Street to hitchhiking across half of Georgia to avoid Rome, and finally from I-16 to I-75 to 411 and straight back into that goddamn hornet’s nest of memory that Rome is.

In the end, the road back to Rome has taken him to the optimistically-named Hope Rebuilding shelter where he sleeps on an Army cot (God, he can’t even get away from that) while listening to the droning buzz of fluorescent lights above his head and the insistent cough of a woman dying of emphysema on the other side of the room. There are plenty of other wayward veterans here, all with glassy eyes and too-long beards (at least his is still red and not ash-gray or bone-white) and the occasional pension check that floats in to provide for cigarettes or the contraband bottle of Wild Turkey.

Jacob resigns himself to his cot, to the olive drab duffel bag that he lives out of with the handful of books he kept from the Beecher Street apartment and a few essentials. The rest, he doesn’t care about. He’s sure he’s going to die here, the same way people do all the time. One day, one of the sweet old ladies of Hope Rebuilding will come over to wake him and find him stone-cold and grinning like he did in the desert, and then maybe they’ll weep a little before calling the ambulance company and funeral home that they have on speed dial. He’s oddly content with that now.

The only other thing keeping him afloat is the person on the other side of those blue marks that ripple onto his skin sometimes. He knows that they’re soulmarks, but he also knows that he’s never going to meet that person, and that it’s for the better that he doesn’t. He’s left them scarred, he’s sure, if the marks are what he imagines. Every time one of them gets hurt, the mark appears on the other person. It’s somehow suitable, in the way that the marks are supposed to be. He knows his soulmate is accident prone but not in any real danger. They get scrapes or bruises all the time, and when he allows himself to let his mind wander, he imagines that they might play some kind of high contact sport, especially when he gets a blue mark on his right shin in the shape of a leg guard.

Sometimes, when his head is unscrewed again and he’s seeing corpses smiling at him when he closes his eyes, he brings his left forearm up to his face and presses his lips against the skin. There’s a thin sky-blue line there, a scar left over from the day when it was a cobalt-colored stripe. After he kisses it, he apologizes again.

He’s sorry that he did this to them, probably making them look like they’ve been drenched in ink.

He’s sorry that they had to watch that happen, and it’s only a little comforting to think that someone out there worried about him.

He’s sorry that they’ll never meet, and he’s sorry that he’s alright with that.

“I wish you could wipe them off,” he says to the scar one night when Sharon-with-emphysema hacks and wheezes and one of the old Vietnam guys groans and yells in his sleep. “I wish you didn’t get stuck with me. I’m sorry.”

His isn’t one of the soulbonds where he feels the things his soulmate feels. But for a moment, he thinks he feels them respond.

It’s okay. We’re okay.

- - -

Joseph is still owl-eyed, but his wide eyes are now hidden behind gold aviators which he only takes off to wipe at his face when he tears up too much. Everything else about him is different. He’s taller now, more muscular, with long dark hair like their mother’s pulled back into a ponytail tied low on his head. He smiles at Jacob like he can’t believe he’s real.

John is… different. Jacob doesn’t blame John for being wary, because they’re practically meeting as strangers. John’s full grown now, which is mind-boggling. He’s a good-looking twenty-something, with slicked back hair and a finely trimmed beard and clothes more expensive than anything Jacob’s ever owned. He’s a lawyer, Joseph explains, and he’s the one responsible for scenting Jacob’s trail.

That’s not hard to do, Jacob says. He hasn’t showered in days.

Joseph doesn’t think that’s very funny, but when John smiles, Jacob knows for sure that it’s his little brother in there, rich boy bedamned.

They catch up slowly, first in the shelter, then at a greasy diner downtown, then at a hotel room that John gets for Jacob so that he can reassemble himself into something almost human.

He learns that Joseph had a soulmate, but she’s dead now. John has a mark, but no one on the other end yet. They find out he has one, but no interest in meeting them.

He almost has to smile as Joseph frowns at this. The Seeds, just as discontent and dysfunctional as they’ve always been.

Then Joseph tells him about the Voice, about his mission, about all this godly crap and being led to convert people whether they want to be converted or not. Joseph says he understands that Jacob will be hesitant, after everything he’s been through.

No shit, says Jacob, and Joseph almost admonishes him for language. John laughs again. He laughs a lot, but it’s not always happy.

Oh, but it’s all true. How else would Joseph find his brothers again? And doesn’t Jacob remember when Joseph told him about the Voice when they were kids?

Jacob stares at him, at his massive eyes that look like they’re pleading for him to believe his brother. Then, he looks at John, who shrugs.

John believes him. He’s even helped rent a space in an old meat-packing plant for this new church Joseph has started. They already have a congregation, and they have space for one more Herald, this thing Joseph says is necessary for them to save the world or whatever.

It’s not like Jacob’s life can get any weirder, honestly.

He looks down at that pale blue line on his left arm, and down at the torn knees of his jeans, where below the feathered white threads, he knows there are two identical silver dollar scars on his knees from what he now believes are a few saved up childhood falls. He almost mentally asks his soulmate if this is alright, if they’d be fine with him running off with one brother who might be just barely clinging to reality, and another who is rich, damaged, and happy to go along for the ride.

He doesn’t ask, because this feels like something they don’t need to know about.

“Sure,” he says. When Joseph looks at him, almost puzzled that he didn’t have to push his point harder, Jacob just shakes his head and shrugs. “Anything for you. I’ve done it before, and I’ll do it again.”

Joseph hugs him again, so tight that it almost hurts. He thanks Jacob repeatedly, saying he won’t regret it. He’ll never regret it. Eden’s Gate is going to succeed, because they’re all together like God planned.

Jacob never tells him that he doesn’t really believe him, but it feels like the right decision all the same.

- - -

So the Lord God called out to Adam, “Where are you?”

“I heard Your voice in the garden,” he replied, “and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.”

Jacob pretends he’s not hiding this. Not hiding the split in his mind and the things that he’s doing, when the Montana soil on his hands gets darker and damper until it runs dark red off his fingers. He pretends he’s not somehow ashamed of this, of the things they do. It’s for Joseph, after all. It’s what Joseph wants, what he says God commands, because God commands that all must convert, be it their decision or not. And God’s commanded Jacob to build Him an army, an army that carries Joseph’s word like a banner.

He pretends this is what he’s wanted all along, and he turns a blind eye to the silver and blue lines and splotches on his skin. They’ll never meet, he knows. They’ll never see this, this empire he builds on the bones of those that have failed. This is not Rome, not Babylon. This is designed to go on forever, beyond the end.

He’d like for them to be there when the world burns away like the impurities in a crucible. But that’s just not meant to be.

- - -

Over the radio, John sounds like he’s about to laugh himself into a fucking aneurysm. Jacob can hear him practically wheezing as he tells Jacob that the Deputy, this Oakley girl that he remembers from the arrest in the church is headed towards the Whitetails in a fury. At first, he thinks John’s laughing because Deputy Oakley thinks she can do something to stop Eden’s Gate, but it quickly becomes clear that it’s not the case.

“I baptized her. Or, tried to,” John attempts to explain, but he dissolves into laughter again until Jacob just turns off the radio out of frustration.

He knows he’ll recognize her. There’s only a handful of people out there who match her description. He’s got it all written down in his office, prepared for wanted posters and broadcasted alerts and commands. Deputy Oakley (Pratt won’t give up her first name), late 20s or early 30s, height between 5′6″ and 5′9″, auburn hair, hazel eyes, dark tan skin. In the church, she had been pretty steadfast and serious, full of nervous energy. Now Jacob knows better, learning that she’s been blazing trails up one mountain and down another. She’s done action movie leaps out of moving helicopters, run around with a pet cougar, and by his security footage, has done stupid shit like hand stands on a cliff edge and stunt rides on a rickety ATV that’s probably as old as she is.

And her stupid laugh is on loop in his head, for all the times he’s eavesdropped on her radio calls with his brother and sister. She has this low, dry laugh that comes close to a witch cackle, but the more honest it is, the richer it is, even though a veil of static.

Of course, she hits the Whitetails like a torpedo. Eli takes to her, as predicted, which jump starts Jacob’s idea. Once she takes the lumber mill and rescues Jess Black (damnit, she would have been a choice recruit, but oh well), he decides to put the plan into action.

And when he captures her and gets her in the chair, he finds out exactly why John was laughing.

In the darkness and shuttered light of the projector, he can’t make out many details about her. He knows Pratt’s put her in the chair while Jacob was preparing, so he hasn’t seen her up close himself. And in the dim light, with casts of gray and green and red, there’s not much to see other than an expression of masked horror and awe. Then, the picture on the projector changes to one of his favorites; one of the white wolves gnawing off a deer leg. The light’s bright enough that he sees–

He sees something impossible.

For the first time in years, he fumbles in his presentation. He freezes, staring, watching her with wide eyes. He sees the light of the projector illuminating patches and spatters of blue that go from her forehead down her temples and cheeks, spilling onto her neck and disappearing under the hem of her black parka before reappearing on the backs of her hands.

And she’s looking at him with the same expression of frozen wonder. Maybe the horror isn’t directed towards what he’s doing so much as what he looks like.

And he thinks. He really thinks.

He doesn’t remember any of those marks in the church, but the waters of the baptism might have washed a layer of make-up away.

“Oh, fuck,” says the Deputy in a whisper.

He echoes her sentiment, and for the first time in ages, he has no idea what to do.

His soulmate is strapped into one of his chairs, ready for a round of conditioning. His soulmate, the one he’s spoken to through scars, apologized to, begged forgiveness from when things got bad, and mentally hid things from, is sitting in front of him as his biggest potential enemy.

Sometimes it takes a little while, his mother had said. Give or take two decades or so.

They don’t wash off, she said. No, but you can hide them with make-up or scar them over so bad that they disappear.

Sorry, sorry, sorry, he had said. And suddenly, he wants to say it again.

Instead, he clears his throat as the projector clicks and shows a deer skull against a snowy background. “Pratt,” he says, and he hears the man grunt behind him. “Take Deputy Oakley to 3-A. We need to have a talk.”

He knows Pratt hesitates, and all it takes is one heavy step toward him to send the man scurrying over to his coworker, quickly undoing the straps. He helps her stand, and she does so on legs that don’t quite hold her up right. When she takes one step and nearly falls, Jacob feels himself lurch forward on the instinct to catch her. He only just stops himself when Pratt catches her and assures her that she’s going to be fine.

Jacob should be the one doing that. He should be–

He stiffens. “Get moving,” he barks, and Pratt almost drags her out of the room.

The other two Whitetails in the room stare at him as the deer skull is projected over him. He breathes heavy, thinking. Always thinking.

And suddenly, he catches that crest of thought that he only felt in juvie, when he was young and still had some optimistic bone that hadn’t been shattered yet. He sees potential there, a future that doesn’t end with either of them dead, or Joseph’s vision ruined. He sees something like promise, like the possibility of having a right hand that can strike as quick and hard as he needs. Someone beside him, someone strong and as of yet unable to really be defeated. He sees his soulmate there, where soulmates should be, this balance on the other end of his scale that’s always been tilted and askew.

She’s seen his pain on her skin, and he’s seen hers. He can use this. He can bring them together and make a partnership and cull the weak in their pack with one of the strongest by his side.

And as he continues his presentation to the hapless Whitetails, who will eventually become the Deputy’s first test, he thinks about the girl in the other room with the ink-blue marks of his scars on her skin. He thinks of the future they can make.

He has no idea that she’s going to fight him every step of the way.

#far cry 5 #prompt fill #jacob seed #junior deputy #jacob/deputy #oc: cody oakley #otp: the fox and the hound #CONGRATS U RECEIVED THE LONGEST PROMPT I'VE EVER WRITTEN #i'm so tired since it's like 2:30 am and i'm dying #so i'll edit this in the morning i guess???#IDK MAN ENJOY

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wionews · 7 years

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Dunkirk movie review: The best blockbuster of 2017

By Sreeju Sudhakaran

Whenever Christopher Nolan announces a movie, it is something that movie buffs await with bated breath. After having dealt with insomnia, magic, superheroes, dreams and space, he has now turned his sight towards Hollywood’s favourite and dependable subject, when they ran out of good ones – World War II. His latest cinematic venture is Dunkirk, a fictional retelling of a lesser told chapter in World War history. Now we have some really good movies in the war genre, courtesy Oliver Stone’s Platoon, Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge and of course, Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. Does Dunkirk join these ranks of being one of the greatest war movies ever made? Bloody Hell, it does!

What’s it about

The movie revolves around the army evacuation of the Allied soldiers at the Dunkirk beach during World War II, when Germany was having an upper hand over UK and France. The evacuation is shown through four different perspectives. First one is through one English soldier Tommy (Fionn Whitehead) who desperately tries to escape from the beach along with two other soldiers, a silent Gibson (Aneurin Barnard) and Alex (Harry Styles). Then there is Commander Bolton (Kenneth Branagh) who is overseeing the evacuation but is frustrated to see the rescue ships being destroyed by the enemies. Third subplot centres around one of the rescue trawlers commissioned by UK to save the soldiers. The boat is captained by one Dawson (Mark Rylance), along with his son and his friend. On the way to Dunkirk, they rescue a lone survivor (Cillian Murphy) from a sunken U-boat who suffers from PTSD. The final track is about Farrier (Tom Hardy) a gutsy pilot who has two enemies to fight – enemy planes and a depleting fuel.

What’s hot

I will start with a disclaimer – I am a huge fan of Nolan and his movies, even if a couple of them did fall short of my huge expectations (The Prestige and Interstellar). However, even without any personal bias, I can say this movie is a cinematic achievement that will change how people make war movies in future. Never has a movie in recent times so completely absorbed me in its proceedings as Dunkirk has, and I can’t even say I relished every minute of that. For this is not that sort of chest-thumping movie that will make you punch your fist in the air. At one hour 46 minutes, this could be Nolan’s shortest film (correct me if I am wrong here), and every minute of it leaves you breathless. And I mean it literally. Like the characters of this movie, even you would be gasping for air at the many claustrophobic moments in the narrative. Believe me, there are plenty. In short, Dunkirk is one nerve-racking experience that you should only go through in IMAX (it’s not in 3D, thankfully, because that gimmick isn’t needed here).

Unlike other movies of this genre, Dunkirk doesn’t rely on sensationalism or gore to terrify, and yet it is the most horrifying movie on war that I have ever seen, even without much visual representation of the blood count. Even the brief moments of calm is unnerving because you know something bad is around the corner (and your instinct is right, most of the times). Nolan doesn’t give any of the characters any kind of backstory, save for a little insight at one of the characters’ past towards the end. The main characters, despite without given a prior background, are all well-etched and easily relatable. What is more frustrating about the plight of our protagonists, is that their home is not too far away (one character says, they can even see their country from the beach), and yet help is not easily available. Unlike other war movies, the enemy here has no faces – we know that they are Germans, but they are represented by well-timed gunshots and explosions, an idea more unnerving than showing a real face. Like Nolan’s classic Memento, the movie doesn’t follow a linear pattern, which springs a surprise on you at certain junctures of the movie.

Technically, the movie is on par with the best of Hollywood. Nolan may have achieved a technical marvel with Interstellar, but it’s here where all the factors gel well. The cinematography by Hoyte van Hoytema is amazeballs, especially in how they shot all those aerial plane fights. Speaking of which, Dunkirk boasts of the best plane fighting sequences I have ever seen in a movie. The sound editing is Oscar-worthy, making us feel we are right in the middle of the attack. Hans Zimmer’s background is another winner, his score in the movie is what John Williams did to Jaws.

Speaking of the performances, every actor in the role fits their character perfectly, and I am glad that Nolan chose a mix of veteran and newcomers as a part of the cast. Debutante Fionn Whitehead has a confident start; he is our eyes in the movie. One Direction fans will be glad to know that Harry Styles hasn’t disappointed at all, he has a promising career in acting ahead. In fact he reminded me of a younger Johnny Depp at times. Tom Hardy is again relegated behind a mask after The Dark Knight Rises, but he lets his eyes do the talking. Mark Rylance, Kenneth Branagh, Jack Lowden, Aneurin Barnard, James D’Arcy, Barry Keoghan and Cillian Murphy were all brilliant in their roles.

What’s not

I really didn’t find any major flaws, apart from a few dialogues which sounded clunky (Nolan’s major weakness). Also those expecting a conventional war drama like Saving Private Ryan and Platoon may find Dunkirk a very unusual experience (though it isn’t a bad idea at all!).

What to do

Someone asked me if Dunkirk is better than Nolan’s The Dark Knight or Memento. I fairly had no clue how to answer him, and I really don’t want to. For Dunkirk is not a movie that begs for comparison, it is a flick immerses you into its proceedings and leaves you enthralled at the end of it. It is a gritty, rivetting revisiting of one of the darkest chapters of modern history, that will leave you gasping at times. Dunkirk may or may not be the best war movie ever made, but it is definitely the best blockbuster of the year. Highly recommended, that too in IMAX.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

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ace-trainer-risu · 7 years

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Why do you hate bosie douglas?

Oh man bout to lay down some Oscar Wilde Discourse!

Just kidding. Sort of?

Anyway, the short answer would be that I really, really love Oscar Wilde. He’s definitely one of my favorite authors/artists/historical figures ever. He was an amazing and incredibly influential figure who lived a tragic life and died way too young, and Bosie (aka Lord Alfred Douglas, for those unfamiliar with his nickname) was not the only person responsible for the tragedy of Oscar’s life, but he undeniably played a role in it. And I just, I really can’t forgive him for that.

The long answer is…

Well, okay, so at my university, English majors had to take a senior thesis class, which was basically just a seminar where you studied one topic really in depth. I took mine on Oscar Wilde, and it was an amazing class, so I really know a lot about him and have read a lot of his writings.

I never know what is and isn’t common knowledge about Wilde since I know a lot about him, but for those who don’t really know him, the basic story is that Wilde was a popular and scandalous Victorian author and playwright. He popularized various fashionable movements like aestheticism and dandyism. It was kind of an open secret that he was carrying out affairs with men. He had an affair with a younger man named Lord Alfred Douglas, AKA Bosie, who was a wealthy aristocrat from the Queensbury family. In the late 1890s, at the height of Wilde’s playwriting popularity, Wilde was embroiled in a series of trials that ultimately led to him being jailed for four years hard labor for gross indecency (essentially for having sex with men). Upon getting out, Wilde emigrated to France, where he died shortly after at the age of 46.

This is not the point of this post, but I highly recommend reading him. The Picture of Dorian Gray is obviously his most famous work, and it’s really beautiful and weird and fucked up and super gay. The Importance of Being Earnest is one of the funniest things I’ve ever read, and it’s also so influential of a work that it’s really hard to see how influential it is, because of course lots of things are like Earnest, except they’re like that because of Earnest. But what I would really recommend to first time Wilde readers is “The Happy Prince” which is a beautiful and heartbreaking little fairy tale that he wrote. He was a hugely influential author on modernism, post modernism, comedy, playwriting, etc.

This is tumblr so I feel strangely compelled to defend my love for him, so, yes, Oscar Wilde is #problematic fave. He practically invented being a problematic fave. I can almost guarantee that young Victorian ladies were fanning themselves and sighing over how much they loved his plays but it was too bad he was so scandalous and their mama wouldn’t let them go see him lecture. I am Aware. I could cheerfully list his myriad sins. But for pretty much all of them, I can think of mitigating factors. I will settle for saying that it’s essentially unfair for a modern, Western person to judge the sexual lives of queer* people in the past. They lived in a completely different culture from us, and many of them were simply doing the best they could under difficult, painful circumstances. It’s important to remember that legal, socially accepted same sex relationships are a very recent invention in the west. If Oscar Wilde cheated on his wife and turned to sex workers, well, what the hell else was he going to do? It’s probably worthwhile to note that by all accounts, he always treated his wife and sex workers very decently and generously.

(*Queer is an anachronistic term. I am aware. However, it’s a little tedious to write out “same sex attracted people” every time. In my opinion, queer is the modern term that most closely matches the way that Oscar Wilde wrote about sexuality. So that’s what I’m going to use.)

Despite his flaws, Wilde also did a lot of amazing stuff. He was, by most accounts, incredibly generous and kind. He was funny and witty. He was good to his children. My friends, we probably wouldn’t look at pretty pictures and write #aesthetic if it were not for Oscar Wilde. He modernized play writing. He was a socialist!!! He was a feminist!! He hated corsets!! He wrote out like a fifty page essay that was basically his headcanons about how Shakespeare was bi and hooking up with his one of his actors who was named Willie Hughes. He wrote kinda bad poetry (which I personally like). He lowkey had a feud with Henry James. He was a Fashion Icon who loved having his photo taken. If you or someone you love has ever worn a tux you can thank Wilde for helping popularize them. And, in my opinion most importantly, he was constantly thinking and writing (subtextually) about how to revolutionize cultural thought about sexuality and male identity. To call Oscar Wilde “gay” or “homosexual” is really a simplification of how he thought about sexuality. In fact, he explicitly objected to being called homosexual (altho it’s important to remember that was a much more stigmatizing term at the time than it is now!). Oscar Wilde, instead, was interested in a forming a world in which, basically, everyone could be themselves and could express themselves freely through art and sex. He wanted people to be able to freely love each other without being slapped with some fixed, restrictive label. Like, you guys, do u ever cry b/c Oscar Wilde just wanted the world to be beautiful and queer and free and for everyone to be gay and happy and make art BECAUSE I DO

And, like, okay. Bosie had a hard life too. I get that! His father has gotta be on the list of like Top Ten Biggest Assholes In History. As much as I dislike Bosie, multiply that by like ten hundred and that’s how I feel about fuckboy Marquis of Queenbury. I know I made that post about traveling back in time to punch Bosie; well, the only reason I don’t wanna punch his dad is b/c his dad like literally invented (a form of) boxing and I’m very small. I am Positive I could take Bosie in a fight, and I am positive his black hole of a father could take me. Also it was probably not easy to be a trailblazing twink in the 1890s (altho like John Gray managed it without being a literal piece of shit so……..). To be serious, Bosie clearly had a lot of rough stuff in his life. But, you know, so do lots of people. And I know I was just saying it’s hard to judge historical figures for their sex lives, but I’m judging Bosie for his behavior, not his sex. So, with all the context out of the way, here’s why I hate Bosie:

a) His poetry is like the soppiest shit ever.

b) He was extremely emotionally manipulative and possibly abusive toward Oscar Wilde. I know it seems kind of weird, because our cultural mindset for abusive relationship is big beefy guy beating his small, helpless wife. And Bosie and Oscar are both men, and Oscar was older and physically larger (did you know that he was like six foot? I hadn’t known that.). But there’s a lot of fucked up stories about their relationship. They were very on again off again, with Oscar frequently being the one to end things, and there are reports of Bosie going to extreme ends to get them back together, including threatening to kill himself. One story, which is hilarious with the distance of time but would have surely been dreadful when it happened, is that one time when they broke up, Bosie sent Oscar a nine. page. telegraph. NINE PAGES! For those of you who don’t know, telegraphs back then charged by the word. That’s like sending your boyfriend nine pages worth of texts, except you send each word individually and you know for a fact he’s out of data for the month. Also some poor individual had to type it all out for you. And yes, Wilde was the one to pay, because you could send telegraphs collect. And this despite the fact that Bosie was very well off, whereas Wilde, who was rather extravagant in his pursuit of dat aesthetic lifestyle, was usually tight on money. There’s also a rather horrible story about a time where Bosie fell ill and Wilde tenderly nursed him back to health, and then when Bosie recovered and Wilde caught his illness and fell sick himself, Bosie verbally abused him and left him alone to suffer. What I’m saying is, it was not a healthy relationship and Bosie did not treat Wilde well.

c) It’s basically inarguable that Bosie played a significant role in Wilde’s trial. Again, I’m not saying it’s just his fault, because it wasn’t. But things would have gone down massively differently without Bosie…or they might not have gone down at all. (Do u ever cry b/c maybe Wilde didn’t have to die at 46 and maybe if he hadn’t queer rights would be years, decades ahead of where they are now I mean I’m not saying definitely, I’m just saying m a y b e???)Queensbury family dynamics were a highly complex thing. It’s probably significant that somewhat before the trial, Bosie’s older brother died under controversial circumstances. The official story was it was a hunting accident, but the gossip of the day was that he killed himself because he was having an affair with another man. This was a serious blow to Bosie’s father, so when his youngest son, with whom he’d always had a contentious relationship, started publicly cavorting with a man rumored to be up to some real scandalous shit, the Marquis of Queensbury was not happy. At one point he even physically threatened Wilde’s life. But Wilde, at least at first, genuinely tried to calm things down. He repeatedly advised Bosie to make up with his father; instead, Bosie continued to provoke him. Eventually, Queensbury left a note for Wilde at a club accusing him of being a sodomite (basically the Victorian equivalent of calling someone the f-slur). And this is where things get really messed up. All of Wilde’s friends advised him to just leave things alone, not make things messy. Bosie, in contrast, advised Wilde to sue his father for libel. So, like, quick note about the legal ramifications of this: basically, libel is only illegal if it’s not true. Thus, all Queensbury’s lawyers had to do was prove that Wilde was having sex with men, which they were able to do, because, you know, he was totally having sex with men. I mean, it was wildly foolish of Wilde to sue for libel when he knew it was not libel! Why would Bosie push him into that?And that wasn’t the end of it, because the Labouchere Amendment made it illegal for two men to have sex, even in the privacy of their own homes. So, because Queensbury’s lawyers could prove that Wilde was engaging in gross indecency, he was able to be charged. The libel trial ruined Wilde’s social standing; the second trial ruined him legally. Oh, and the costs of the trial also bankrupted him! Things then get slightly more horrible, because, for a person of Wilde’s fame and status, the police basically gave you a warning period. There was a time frame in which he could have fled the country, and extradition treaties were not really a thing then, so although he would have been ruined and unable to return to England, he wouldn’t have been arrested. All of his friends advised him to flee, but he didn’t. And no one really knows why, although if you ask me, it’s because a) he was basically an extremely self destructive person, and b) I think it’s probably unimaginably heart breaking to have your entire society turn on you and paint you as a monster and pervert, and maybe at a certain point you lose the will to fight, and c) Oscar Wilde wanted everything to be beautiful and like art, like a story, and I wonder if he didn’t feel that this was how the story of his life was “supposed” to go. But that’s really just my theory.And so Oscar Wilde was sent to jail for 4 years hard labor, and by all accounts his heart and his health were broken. He lived in France for a few years, but he never wrote anything again other than the Ballad of Reading Gaol (“Each man kills the thing he loves”… I’m looking at YOU Bosie), and then he died, still quite young, and not of syphilis despite what certain supposedly reputable biographies try and tell you.And none of that had to happen. None of that would have happened if it weren’t for Bosie. He shouldn’t have pushed his father to attack Oscar, and he certainly shouldn’t have pushed Oscar into the libel trial. Oscar Wilde himself wrote that he felt as if Bosie threw him and his father at each other, as if he was trying to destroy both of them. And then after the trial, he basically abandoned Wilde. I believe he only visited him in jail once. Why would you do that? Why would you try and destroy the person you supposedly love, the person that loves you? I just can’t understand or forgive that. I know I joke around a lot in this post but what happened to Wilde honestly makes me so sad. It breaks my heart. He was a beautiful person who wanted to make the world beautiful and full of love and art, and the person he loved tried to destroy him. And really, the inexcusable straw for me is that later in life Bosie wrote some piece of shit biography in which he denied that he and Wilde were ever lovers and painted Wilde as some sort of monster and pervert. No one fucking asked you, Bosie.

So yes, that’s why I fucking hate Bosie, and that’s my Oscar Wilde Discourse™.

#things you didn't care to know about veronica #the asks and the answers #oscar wilde #that oscar wilde discourse #bosie hate #do i need to tag that lol #i hope this is not? a controversial opinion?#but even if it is I STAND BY IT #i hate bosie fight me #but like...be gentle

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