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that-shamrock-vibe · 3 years

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Movie Review: Wonder Woman 1984 (Spoilers)

Spoiler Warning: I haven’t been able to see this movie when it came out here in the U.K, so had to wait until a couple of days after Christmas to both watch and review it. If you haven’t seen this movie by the last week of the year and want to avoid spoilers go and watch it before reading on.

General Reaction:

I have finally seen Wonder Woman 1984, the first new superhero movie I have seen in 2020 outside of The New Mutants and my god it has been a trial to be able to watch this.

Being from the U.K, which was surprisingly a factor with one minor part of this movie, we over here usually get the big blockbusters particularly of the comic-book variety before or on the same day as the U.S. However, thanks to this fakakta pandemic and the new world order that movie studios and theatres find themselves in during 2020, I have been reduced to watching a blockbuster movie for the first time initially on my laptop rather than on the big screen as movies like this should be brought out first as.

I am fully aware that this is a global pandemic and that watching movies in the cinema pales in significance to what needs to be done to combat and eventually defeat this crisis, but being from an area where all cinemas are closed I’m out on a limb basically.

I won’t turn this part of the review into a COVID rant because frankly I am sick of talking about it but I do feel COVID will be a factor with the performance of these upcoming movies.

That being said, the second real world rant factor I have for this is WW1984 I feel has suffered due to constant schedule shifting and I feel a fairly uneven advertising campaign.

I went into this movie not thinking I was going to see the villains the way they are in the trailers or the comics and honestly it does seem that Cheetah and Max Lord, who are both credited Wonder Woman villains, have their roles reversed and the one who you think is going to be the biggest threat pretty much becomes a henchman and the one mainstream fans may not know a lot about is surprisingly the big threat but you’re also meant to feel sympathetic for both of them to a degree.

It seems a complete 180 spin from the first Wonder Woman movie which was a very grounded and gritty WW1 story to now be in the zany 80s...which as a decade has aspects of being zany yes but the way in which this movie plays out genuinely made me think of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies...but the best of them rather than Emo Peter.

There are so many plot points in this movie that more or less spawn from the main McGuffin of the movie which is the Dream Stone allowing people to make wishes but grants them with a sacrifice. The movie has several sub-plots that are the repercussions of the wishes that everyone makes and individually all of these sub-plots are very interesting...it’s when you then try to tie them all together for the big climactic battle that is when you get a bit of a mess,

Also, there is hardly any action in this movie and as both a Wonder Woman movie and a superhero movie in general, I am longing for some action sequences this year and the fact there are almost no good v evil fights would be disappointing, if not for the fact I understand where Patty Jenkins and the writers are trying to accomplish with this movie in comparison to the first movie.

I am not a massive Wonder Woman fan, I know the basics of Diana, the two Wonder Girls, Cheetah and Max Lord enough to understand what is going on. But the one thing that has always drawn me to her is that she is a hero with two distinct sides.

Firstly there’s the warrior that most mainstream fans would be aware of which is more played up in the first movie, but then there’s also the diplomat and the ambassador who attempts to always get across her message of peace which is more played up here.

If I think about it from that perspective, I can forgive the lack of action.

That being said, there is still a jumble of plot points that once you do untangle them all lead to the same conclusion, but there are too many ideas in 2h30 to make the movie coherent.

That’s the main negatives out of the way, the positives somewhat outweigh the negatives, let it be known I did enjoy this movie and there are some brilliant moments and sequences, but a lot of scenes aren’t developed enough or some aspects seem to be kept on the backburner maybe for a sequel.

Characters:

Diana:

We have to start with Wonder Woman herself, but as I mentioned before I am calling her Diana rather than Wonder Woman in my subheading because there wasn’t a lot of Wonder Woman action in this movie. If you’ve seen the trailers you’ve seen pretty much everything.

Going back to that first action piece when we are reintroduced to Wonder Woman at the shopping mall, I do understand why she’s doing what she’s doing by acting as a vigilante rather than a public superhero and not using violence does keep in step with where we first met her in Batman v. Superman during present day where she claims not to be about fighting or saving mankind anymore and to be honest here she does keep with that. She’s given up her Godkiller sword and shield but still makes full use of her lasso of truth along with her bracelets of submission and Aunt Antiope’s Tiara in a defensive manner but never to outwardly cause harm.

But yes, this entire sequence could easily substitute Wonder Woman with Spider-Man and her lasso and tiara with his web-shooters and feel like the good parts of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies. It’s just borderline corny and somewhat cartoonish particularly when she’s saving the two young girls by either dropping them on a rocking horse or spinning them into giant teddy bears.

Also there’s that Cairo highway chase scene which sees Steve and Diana chasing after Max Lord who has just achieved his goal of claiming an army. I both like and dislike this scene. I like the scene for showing the starting effects of Diana’s power loss which is later explained to be the cause of Barbara’s wish to be like her which means she is syphoning Diana’s power.

On the flip-side, I really don’t like the overall action in this scene. Firstly, she seemingly has her armour on underneath her clothes because as she’s getting out the car she has her clothes on one minute and her armour in the next shot with no spinning involved.

Secondly, she gets out the car and starts running almost instantly while the car is still moving...I get she’s a demigoddess and therefore normal laws of motion may not apply to her but there’s no dodgy transition or stumbling or anything, she just starts running...Baywatch style to a remix of her theme which is brilliant but because of her losing her powers she is somewhat weakened and therefore you see her bleed. The whole scene just seems rather sloppy.

Regardless of the somewhat lacklustre action of the movie, Wonder Woman 1984 excels in presenting a different form of battling with words rather than weapons. Diana’s message of hope and love at the end of the movie may be a complete switch around from how she was all for being the god-killer in the first movie where Ares was involved, but it’s definitely a good message and, particularly in these times, a needed message.

Sometimes love and hope is enough, Diana does try and see the best in everyone and cannot understand or comprehend evil unless there is no other option. Ares was the God of War and as such a personification of hate and therefore evil. Max was simply corrupted and misguided and Diana could see that, just as Barbara was.

All of this is sold in Gal Gadot’s performance. You can tell from the start Diana is doing what she’s doing because she feels it is what’s right, but particularly when Steve comes back and the ultimatum is either saving the world or keeping him she is definitely torn at one point. Steve is the only thing she has ever wished for herself other than becoming a warrior and protector so why shouldn’t she be rewarded for her decades of servitude?

Also, much like every movie she appears in, Gal Gadot looks stunning throughout this movie. Not just in her Wonder Woman and Golden Armor but also in her Diana persona, she wears what appears to be a boiler suit at one point in this movie and still looks like it could be modelled on a runway. I know Gal is/was a model but she is never defined by that. When she’s acting she’s an actress first and a model second and the clothes never wear her.

My favourite look of hers which I now have in Funko form is her gala dress because not only does it honour her Amazon roots but it just looks stunning.

Her Wonder Woman armour here is made somewhat more cheesecaky than her other versions and it does make Diana look somewhat like Wonder Woman barbie but because of the vibrant 80s setting this movie is in and particularly with who else shows up in the movie offering a great parallel to it, it actually won me over. If this is how Wonder Woman looks as a diplomat I’ll allow it.

I really do enjoy the parallels between the DCEU’s Diana Prince and Bruce Wayne in terms of the detective/vigilante combination. Because there was little fighting here, Diana was allowed to be the detective more, travelling to different places tracking down Max Lord and figuring out that the Dream Stone is the cause of Steve returning from the dead.

However, while they may be pushing Diana and Bruce together in the present day, Diana’s true love is Steve Trevor and the two do have a fantastic blend of a working and romantic partnership on par, for me, with Ant-Man and the Wasp from the comics.

Outside of Steve though, Diana definitely has no love-loss for other men until the end of this movie. She sees right through Max Lord’s childish bravado at the start of the movie, she’s quick to repel any letchy guy throughout this movie, and it isn’t until Steve effectively gives her permission to move on at the end that she does...albeit seemingly with the man whose body Steve took over which seems a little backwards to me but I’ll allow it.

Wonder Woman also gets some fancy new upgrades in this movie. Not only do we have more functions of the Lasso of Truth with showing memories and broadcasting a voice, but also Diana gets her invisible jet through the means of a new power being able to make things invisible which she says is inherited from her father (Zeus) who used the power to hide Themyscira from the world.

The jet is a great precursor to what comes later because while flying in the jet, Diana talks about her longing to be able to fly which we all know as fans that she can do in pretty much every other incarnation yet all we’ve seen her do in the DCEU is leap long distances.

So the payoff when she actually flies after letting go of Steve finally was fantastic, honestly a fist-pumped the air and startled my dog because I got that excited. I do love how she still uses her lasso to propel herself and swing from lightning because it’s kind of like training wheels but seeing her fly at the very end unaided was everything.

I can’t decide how I feel about the ending, I do love how Diana saved the day in terms of using words over weapons, but it’s the fact she is pretty much looking directly at the camera while giving this big hope and love speech implying that she is talking to us as an audience as well as the world within the movie. It just seems very much a #BeKind movement which, again, is an important message particularly in today’s climate. But why does this need to be in a superhero movie?

Gal Gadot continues to be rather funny in the role as well. As with the first movie though, her humour is never really in jokes or in her actions but rather in serious dry whit. This kind of humour is right up my street. From her rejection of Max’s offer to buy her a TV to teaching Steve about the advancements in the 1980s from his time it was all rather well handled.

Diana simply continues to be a very warm and welcoming hero and Gal Gadot radiates these traits effortlessly. You feel bad whenever she feels bad, you want to cry whenever she cries, you get angry whenever she gets angry and you smile whenever she smiles. Gal Gadot continues to be as perfect in the role of Wonder Woman as Johnny Depp is for Jack Sparrow and Rosario Dawson is Ahsoka Tano.

Max Lord:

Okay so this is where things get complex because, to the best of my knowledge, this version of Max Lord is not the same as the one from the comics or any other media I’ve seen...I genuinely actually think they say Lord isn’t even his actual surname in this movie.

Alright, so this is where I’m slightly conflicted on this character. Maxwell Lord from the comics and Smallville where I first became aware of the character is a meta with the ability to control minds.

Becoming the Dream Stone doesn’t really give him the same power as effectively it makes him a genie but the power of the dream stone being equivalent to that of the Monkey’s Paw which grants wishes with consequences I guess is of similar elk.

Also, it’s not stated but shown that Max has some sort of degenerative condition before obtaining the stone but using the power of the stone seemingly sped up the condition because by the third act of the movie he looked like a shell of a man.

Obviously he knew of this which is why he wanted to utilize the stone’s power to a mass audience in order to grant their wishes and in return syphon their health and wealth but this is why I say that neither he nor Barbara were true villains because they were corrupted by the power the stone gave them.

I have a very weird stance of sympathetic villains, Cheetah is supposed to be a sympathetic villain to a degree but I’ve never really seen Max as such. In Smallville he is pretty much a henchman or underling whereas in Supergirl he was somewhat an anti-hero towards the end but mainly a villain.

I get the movie’s message of “Nothing good comes from hate” is in reference to the stone which was made by a trickster god and as such is inherently corrupt which makes its users also corrupt but not evil. But considering I originally didn’t think Max would be the main antagonist of the movie, when it was revealed he was I wanted to see some evil for evil’s sake behaviour rather than power corrupts twice over.

Also, in relation to his wishing power, the scene in which he tries to go through numerous clients to regain his health does play off a lot like Lucifer luring out people’s greatest desires.

Speaking of the wishes, two aspects of this I want to highlight. Firstly, when he reaches out to the world and grants everyone’s wishes, that one wish the diner lady utters about wanting the Irish to go back to where they come from...as someone of Irish heritage this is that wish I mentioned being from the U.K. was a surprising factor in for me...despite my Irish heritage being of Republic blood rather than Northern.

Secondly, I have now seen this movie twice and I do not know the reason for the weird satellite light that Max was in during the climax. I mean everything was basically going to hell and Max receiving the energy of the wishes and granting the wishes was basically giving him this protective funnel which Wonder Woman couldn’t penetrate, but was the light from the satellites and why did he need the satellites other to broadcast himself which he’s clearly already doing so what’s going on? I may not be making much sense but I genuinely don’t know what was going on at that point.

Pedro Pascal was still very good in this role, he comes across a lot better in the actual movie than he does in the trailers because the shots we see of him in the trailers I genuinely thought he was wearing a hairpiece, and he still might be but it looks more natural throughout the movie.

I know Pascal to be a rather funny individual in interviews and behind the scenes of other projects, but I’ve never seen him actually be funny in character...again I’m not sure how I feel about a comedic villain, but between this role and his role as Agent Whisky in Kingsman: The Golden Circle, he has the makings of a great villain actor.

There were times when Pascal played the character like Steve Carrell voice’s Gru in Despicable Me which again plays into the comedic villain angle but overall I felt his motives were clear and the way in which he went about achieving his goals was bold, ballsy and well executed.

I get why they added a son for Max in this movie and I am glad they stuck with the fact Pedro Pascal is Latino despite I don’t believe the character originally is but it added some diversity to the movie along with Gal Gadot’s Israeli accent. But yeah the point of the son was to personify what Max sacrificed in exchange for his wish because all he wants deep down is to be a success in his son’s eyes and feels this is how to go about it, but when it’s the choice between his son’s safety over the completion of his dynastic plan, similarly to Diana choosing to give up what she wants (Steve) for the greater good, he chooses his son.

Also I will say this. When Alastair tells Max that he already loves him because he’s his dad and strokes his face...Had I actually seen this movie when it came out in the U.K. it would have been two days before the finalé of The Mandalorian Season 2. But because I saw that finalé first and the very emotional scene between Din and Grogu...to see that pretty much replicated here felt slightly lacklustre.

Max doesn’t die at the end, no one dies in this entire movie (technically) so there is room for him to return unless they do another time jump. I’m not sure why he would return unless he goes full villain for villainy sake rather than corruption but I am actually happy he survived.

Having said that, one of Wonder Woman’s most famous moments from the comics is snapping the neck of Maxwell Lord. This could have easily been the climax of the movie but I feel thanks to Man of Steel giving this plot point to Superman when he snapped Zod’s neck, despite chronologically this coming first it would lose it’s momentum,

Cheetah:

I will admit I was not as disappointed with Barbara as I thought I would be going into this movie.

Having said that, I’m going to start with the negatives before talking about the positives of the character.

Firstly, both Barbara and later Cheetah are redheads, Kristen Wiig is naturally not but for the role of the character she could have easily worn a wig or died her hair for the role because not only is Barbara being portrayed as the ditzy blonde at the start of the movie a little redundant at this point, when she became Cheetah it did not look right with her as a blonde.

Now let’s talk about the actual Cheetah look. We’ve seen that one shot of her in the DC Fandome trailer but it was so dark and so quick that there was practically nothing to analyse, seeing her appear in the final 30 minutes of this movie...which is how long she actually appears as Cheetah...it’s both a lot to take in but also a lot to be disappointed in.

So Barbara’s turning point to villainy I feel isn’t when she beats up that man who attempted to assault her, but instead when she fears Diana and Steve are talking about killing Max to save the world because he absorbed the stone and the stone needs to be destroyed to save the world from carnage.

At this point she appears at the White House just as Diana has Max captive, dressed in this admittedly trendy Cheetah-print attire, incapacitates or possibly kills the White House security team and gives both Wonder Woman and Steve a whooping.

Firstly, the very fact there was no mention of the fact Barbara could tell Diana Prince and Wonder Woman were the same person just shows how daft the secret identities of some of these DC Heroes is.

But secondly, when Max retreats, Barbara hitches a ride with him and gets another wish for saving his life. Rather than wishing to be like Diana this time, she wishes to become an Apex Predator and is therefore granted the anger and vengeance of all the people Max grants wishes to via satellite.

This combination somehow turns her into a Cheetah as when we next see her she is Cheetah...a very badly CG’d undeveloped version of Cheetah but this is our Cheetah.

My version of Cheetah is from Injustice 2 and I know a bit of her backstory in the comics enough to know she was an archaeologist who was cursed to become the Cheetah and how in the DC Rebirth Wonder Woman, Barbara and Diana were friends but then when she became Cheetah, she felt betrayed by Diana and became her enemy that way.

That’s kind of similar here but it’s not a Cheetah curse that made her Cheetah, it’s a wish and a very literal interpretation of the wish “I want to become an Apex predator”...what’s an apex predator? A cheetah, get it?

Also as Cheetah, she just looks like Barbara styled her hair different and bought a Cheetah onesie. I wish she had gone full cheetah with the face, instead we get some very weird make-up which seems to wash off when they land in the water and some weird contouring or something to give Kristen Wiig a different nose...they could have continued the Cheetah fur on the face, given her cat-eyes, bigger fangs, something!

Again, Barbara’s villainy stems from power corruption, Barbara’s first wish was wanting to be like Diana and because of this got her powers so went a little bit power mad when she discovered she had super strength and speed.

Interestingly though, despite being electrocuted, Barbara does survive and when all the wishes are renounced she reverts back to a human...or does she?

Keep in mind that we never see Barbara take back her wish, in fact she is quite adamant in not doing that which leads Diana to making the hard call. The fact is it was by Max’s hand that Barbara finally became Cheetah so when he took back the wish of becoming the Dream Stone, that wish was rescinded…but Barbara’s original wish of becoming like Diana and thus gaining the powers of an Amazon demigoddess actually might still be in tact.

It’s implied that she is still pissed at Diana even after reverting back to human, so I do see her returning more than I do Max Lord but in her return I hope there’s a Cheetah redemption.

Steve Trevor:

I am really starting to be won around by Chris Pine as an actor. Originally in my list of “Hollywood Chris’” he was at the bottom because he isn’t Marvel, but now I think I actually would put him ahead of Pratt. Not only do I love him in this role here but also Rise of the Guardians which I’ve re-watched over the holidays.

So when it was announced that Pine would return as Steve Trevor in a movie set decades after the first movie which he died in, I like a lot of fans were curious as to how they were going to accomplish this. I mean we’re dealing with the DC variation of Greek Mythology and so I thought maybe Hades could be a factor, but then when the MacGuffin known officially I think as a Dream Stone became a factor with the trailers, the idea of him being resurrected as a wish by Diana was speculated which was kind of true but there was a catch in that he only came back to Diana but taking over another man’s body.

The movie I think beautifully brings Diana’s childhood lesson taught to her by Aunt Antiope about cheating full circle with the wish she makes to see Steve again. In her defence, Diana did not know what she was doing or that she was actually wishing on a wishing stone, but when she realises the impact that this seemingly innocent wish is having on the world, ultimately she has to wake up to the fact that this is a cheat because Steve is dead but Diana has brought him back in another man’s body...without his consent. Again, NOT DIANA’S FAULT, but she is pseudo-responsible and so can’t win because she cheated. This is a plot point I wish they had developed further or highlighted more because, having seen it twice now in the past 24 hours, that is probably my favourite message of the movie. Cheaters never prosper, not even Wonder Woman or Cheetah.

Steve being introduced to the 1980s was a great chance to reverse the fish out of water story Diana had in the first movie but while hers was one of both wonder and humour, Steve’s was mostly wonder and it was so endearing to see.

I loved how we didn’t take too long on Steve exploring the 80s, I liked how organically it was woven into the ongoing story. We did get that great small touring scene of Diana showing Steve the art and the breakdancing, but that he discovered pop tarts and his wonder in wanting to fly that jet rather than simply get on a plane to travel to Cairo, it was all very well done and that’s mostly on Chris Pine.

I did find the body-snatching a little bit creepy at first and at the very end. We didn’t meet the guy that Steve inhabited (for want of a better word) so I don’t feel strongly positively or negatively about him because we don’t know him, but when we meet him at the end when we somehow flashforward from July to Christmas, I did feel weird that not only did it seem that he and Diana were interested in each other but also the fact it wasn’t even mentioned that he couldn’t remember the time that Steve was in his body.

As I said before when talking about Diana, the blend of the romantic/working relationship between Diana and Steve is (sorry) #relationshipgoals for superhero couplings. I am aware that Steve Trevor isn’t a superhero but neither is Lois Lane but both civilian halves of these superhero couples are very potent in the comics and I have never understood this particular relationship until now.

Steve is as strong a part of the duo as Wonder Woman is because while he doesn’t have her Amazon physiology, he has that core inner strength that he had in the last movie which is why he sacrificed himself originally...now yes he pretty much did the exact same thing here but this was after he was pretty much carrying Diana through that D.C. street and seeing all the chaos that these wishes were causing...genuine anarchy....that Steve knew the only way Diana could regain her strength and save the world was for her to let go of him.

It was the most emotional scene of the movie for me and the only scene to almost make me cry. after crying at the Mandalorian finalé I am not crying at another show or film for a while but still, because not only could you tell both of them didn’t want this to happen but also as Diana pulls herself away from Steve not looking at her as the camera pans away from him you just hear his voice saying “I will always love you Diana, no matter where I am”. There’s never been a more potent portrayal of a superhero couple in my opinion in the movies. Tony and Pepper came close in Avengers: Endgame but this tops it for me.

Do I see Steve returning again? Yes, because I feel when you’re dealing with a property about gods and magic there is always potentiality for anything. I mean this movie is the definition of potentiality for anything because I think if it does succeed then they get away with a lot that other properties wouldn’t, but anyway yes I want Chris Pine to return to this role because I love him in it.

Amazons:

This is another scenario where the advertising lets the audience make up what is in store for us with announcements because announcing that Robin Wright is returning as Antiope after dying at the start of the last movie does raise suspicion.

The obvious solutions were resurrection, vision or flashback and for the majority of Amazon scenes save for one it was all flashbacks which I’m not going to grumble at because I enjoyed that opening scene.

I like how Themyscira basically has their own version of Ninja Warrior and that this scene was most likely set chronologically after Antiope agreed to train her. Which begs the question why her mother was so okay with it considering even as an adult Hippolyta has issues with Diana becoming a warrior but her contribution was so short I let that slide.

I’ve already mentioned how Antiope’s lesson of cheater’s never prosper was utilized so well in this movie but, similarly to Chris Pine, I just love any reason to bring back Robin Wright.

Aside from Hippolyta and Antiope though there was a third minor Amazon focused on in a couple of scenes in this movie, that is the ancient Amazon warrior Asteria.

Asteria was mentioned a couple of times, firstly by Hippolyta in reference to her statue as someone to strive to become and then by Diana to Steve when discussing the origins of her Golden Armor. During this discussion we see a flashback of Asteria in a crouched position being whaled on by Neanderthals protecting the Amazons as they retreated to Themyscira. We only see her eyes and at this point in the movie I thought Asteria was a throwaway character and so Connie Nielson was doing double-time as Hippolyta and Asteria.

However, this proves to be untrue as in the only post-credits scene we get we see Asteria walking down seemingly the same street we left Diana on in Washington, though they never clarify where it is. Furthermore we originally only see the back of her and she is dressed a lot like Diana with the same hair and clothing style. She even effortlessly stops a pillar or lamppost from crashing down.

But it isn’t Diana, at least not the one Gal Gadot is portraying...as it is revealed to be Asteria portrayed by Lynda Carter in a fabulous short, sweet and somewhat cheeky sequence where she states “I’ve been doing this for a long time” with a cheeky wink directly to the camera. I mean she basically echoes lines Diana says in the movie, but the fact it’s OG Wonder Woman and knowing we’re also getting Michael Keaton returning as Batman in the upcoming Flashpoint movie, it’s all just brilliant.

Obviously for fans of the Supergirl series, Lynda Carter had a recurring role on that as Earth-38′s President of the United States who was an alien and I have also seen her in Sky High, but looking at her here she just looks flawless.

Does this mean we’re going to see Asteria in Wonder Woman 3? I can’t wait to find out.

DCEU:

Speaking of the larger DCEU, this movie does absolutely nothing to connect itself to any other DC movie or property. We’re in 1984...Bruce Wayne is 12 so at this point has lost his parents, the original Black Canary is potentially crime-fighting, it’s the year Lex Luthor is born, Clark Kent is living in Smallville, Amanda Waller would just be starting out in the career that would see her become director of ARGUS. There are so many possibilities particularly as we haven’t had a movie set in the 80s within the DCEU before.

This is where DC continues to flounder where Marvel succeeds. They do not grab the opportunities for a cinematic universe expansion and instead keep everything contained. I don’t even think the events of Wonder Woman were mentioned outside of Steve’s death.

Particularly as we now have to wait until August for The Suicide Squad as the next DC movie (outside of the Snyder Cut), it would have been nice either if there would have been a tease to lead into that or even if something in this movie links to the Snyder Cut of Justice League.

Overall I rate this movie a 7/10, it’s a very enjoyable movie if you manage to follow all the threads the plot weaves into this movie, because they’re not seamless.

I’ve actually paid attention to the box office, reviews and CinemaScore for these movies since Birds of Prey and I have to say for being a focussed Wonder Woman movie it is underperforming from the first one with a B+ here as opposed to an A there, but considering Diana’s first outing was in Batman v Superman with a B score, I think the fact both Justice League and this have a B+ bodes well as it averages out with middle of the pack superhero movies, and that’s a good way to describe this movie.

It’s not better than the original, and there are many tangles within it, but it’s not a terrible movie. Again I’ve seen it twice in the last 24 hours and neither time got old for me.

So that’s my review of Wonder Woman 1984, what did you guys think? Post your comments and check out more DC Movie Reviews as well as other Movie Reviews and posts.

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ratherhavetheblues · 4 years

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INGMAR BERGMAN’S ‘THE RITE’ “I have undefined feelings of fear…”

The films of Ingmar Bergman present a double dilemma. First of all, their dramas pose a very seldom recognized alert. Moreover, when in fact recognized, the intimacy almost always proves to be unwelcome. Secondly, those players actually game for the dare, find themselves unable to maintain serious coherence. Our film today, namely, The Rite (1969), is somewhat unusual in as much as all four of the characters (of this cameo production) are significantly in-the-know. But they perform poorly amidst others, and also amidst their self. (That we have declared the film, In the Presence of a Clown [1997] to be Bergman’s swan song, does nothing to end more instances of absorbing volatility.)

Whatever blood feuds Bergman might have embroiled himself in, toward the bureaucracy of the theatre and the bureaucracy of the law, his raison d’etre here was to spotlight the care and carelessness of disinterestedness. He had had from the very early outset of his endeavors, in the film, Summer Interlude (1951), a deep concern for those few with an instinct for attaining to a sensibility of kinetic disinterestedness being trampled by hordes of selfish, cowardly brutes. Accompanying that debut was a galaxy of optics and sonics intent upon interrupting theatricals hitherto seeming unassailable. The church of Bergman, thereby, tasted with pleasure the atmosphere for its pristine spirit, while clutching, as if a mathematical truth, melodramas of domestic nefariousness and nothing else but scraps of integrity, because the “something else” would take real guts. Seeing that those early communications might as well be Hollywood, by the end of the sixties there came to pass another ingredient to open a closed door. On the heels of two films, now-homicidal, in their destructiveness (in the form of Hour of the Wolf and Shame [both in 1968])—and just before the mass murder movie of The Passion of Anna (1969) rounding off a trilogy—the helmsman saw fit to up the ante in the form of a strange and yet mundane touch, namely, silently pushing with hands and fingers. This could be called a form of rite, with the proviso that rites take many forms. The display of this action features three millionaire experts in making a splash, along with one bungler killed by the trio. The former wends its sort-of merry way. The bungler alone has lived, despite largely missing the boat. Here’s how it went, in a nine-day production hustle, that no one chose to take seriously.

After some vintage-style harsh percussion discordance, we see the unimpressive protagonist looking through a magnifying glass. (“Dear, dear,” the wayward pundit pounces. “That’s pretty ordinary, for an investigation.”) However, the first scene requires consciousness of that mid-century flare-up, called “The Theatre of the Absurd,” and particularly that flaccid form of the playwright, Eugene Ionesco, he of the once recognized (for a few days) invention, called “Rhinoceros,” pounding along the streets of a sleepy downtown, to maintain that other engines exist. The bemusing get-go today involves the demanding peripatetic theatre group, called, “Les Riens” (“The Nothings”), of great interest to a judge, being tasked to get to the bottom of a charge of pornography, which, on the face of it is trivial (absurd); but it becomes a life and death challenge none of them can handle. The approach of the official and the putatively dangerous vagabonds is a classic of parody, aimed toward those readily losing any creative traction. The judge fusses with his reading glasses, rubs his face with his handkerchief, and, with a forced smile, ushers in “The Nothings,” themselves. “Welcome! How do you do? Please come in. This weather’s very trying. Record temperatures, I hear. 34 degrees, most unhealthy! Yesterday’s thunderstorm didn’t help, although it was pouring down…” (Though the matter must figure more fully, later on, we have to digress from Ionesco to point out the presence of that trio forming a moment of the “very trying,” the interplay of a cluster—the judge all but eclipsed—which speaks to an audacity not happening. During the moment of the magnifier, two lights are prominent. The judge is positioned between those lights, but magic interactive initiative is very far away.) One of the artists complains, “The show was interrupted twice while the lights went out [only two singularities]. Odd when it happens in a big city… A kind of panic…”

Panic, it seems, becomes a watchword, inasmuch as the atmosphere skips from Ionesco’s easy going, bourgeois quirkiness to a very different, darker absurdist register, namely that of playwright, Jean Genet, specifically his play, “The Balcony,” set in a brothel, with a judge overarching his mandate, to say the least. Drinks are offered, and it starts slowly with two Coca Colas and a sherry. (“The Government is paying!”) As with the anything but gentle Genet judge, our considerably gentle Bergman judge approaches (absurdly) an infraction on the same level of a parking ticket, as if needing to straighten out the universe. “Every day is a work day for me. I’m a workaholic. My doctor has warned me… If I had a loving wife at home… We’re not here to talk about me, agreeable though it is…” The judge, unlike the Genet glutton, has been galvanized by the three exotics in hopes of gaining from their supposed intensities a greater understanding. (That twist, never to be seen in the annals of Theatre of the Absurd and its fulsome nihilism, brings to the occasion something unique.)

It was one thing that the workaholic would pry into their business in hopes of measuring increases of wisdom. It was something else that they would stand for it. Having culled a mass of controversial data, the roaring little pedant has touched so many nerves that their usual aplomb has failed. (Here absurdity drama races along a track of old-timey, screwball comedy, as hitting heights, in Bergman’s film, A Lesson in Love [1954].) The documentarist who never sleeps peppers his guests in this way: “The Dutch police were utterly shaken, that’s for sure!” (That they were, on one occasion, performing for a group of politicians and industrialists, at a chateau near Liege could be the complication.) “You jumped a set of lights in 1956.” The group’s income having been hidden away in a Swiss bank.

With all their advantages, the sensationalists reveal to be looking toward an oncoming rhinoceros, enflamed by the mouse’s modest hopes. Now crazily shackled to a routine of solo interrogation, the top dogs lose poise in remarkable ways. Two of the worriers, Thea and Sebastian, back at their hotel, rattle off an inventory which would somewhat put to shame their feeding a fan base of assholes. She starts slowly, first of all by clasping her hands, only to increase her stress. She regards her fingers with dismay. “I’d love to sleep on my own, but I can’t sleep if you’re not here.” She goes on to fault him for having slept with the wife of a terminal cancer victim. He retorts, “My contract expires in six months. Then we’ll dissolve our friendship.” He begins to kiss her crotch. Her fingers are seen in close-up, tightly splayed. He recounts a juvenile dream. She, not only telling him that he’s a dull lover, but also surprising us with an anecdote. (Prior, however, to sitting on top of the back of a plush seat, as if on a throne, she hopes to still the spectre of scandal by wielding a tennis-racket size mirror. We see, from our perspective, only the void of the mirror’s back. Introspection impossible. That being a second coming of the cheap haute couture model, in Bergman’s Dreams. To round out the impasse, she places the mirror over her crotch.) “I’m going to tell you what a psychiatrist once said to me. He said, ‘You’re not solid matter, you’re movement. You flow into others, they flow into you. Nothing’s constant… When you realize this, your neurosis will go…’ And then he said, ‘The islands in the river are a sign of approaching death… They grow and solidify, rising out of the flowing darkness. One day the stream will be suffocated—by islands.’” Sebastian had slept through her highlight. (There is a long history of such failing to thrive, in early and later films.) Then there is Sebastian, who might not have slept at all, with, “I remember something a director once said about actors. ‘I never cease to marvel that suddenly lilies will shoot up out the arses of carcasses.’” (Is that a dig or a homage?) A cut to her finds her with one hand over her face. She proceeds, by departing with, “Lord have mercy on me…” That elicits from him, “Take me unto You. Deliver my soul, let it perish in the void.” A pan to her, discloses both of her hands covering her face like a grill. After she’s gone, Sebastian burns his bedding. The physical source of that recklessness is seen to be, “Union Match.”

The optics of Sebastian, on his burning bed, spread back to the televised Vietnamese suicide demonstrator, in the Bergman film, Persona (1966). Whereas that sacrifice had believed that major change could happen, with the play of destruction here nothing vivid and progressive has a hope. Sebastian becomes the first of the trio to be interrogated as to motive and punishment. The interview, in fact, finds the overly circumspect and curious bureaucrat being “burned” by the fire-bug’s studious spleen. Withal, however, there occurs the mole’s very awkward bid to join such hoped-for “splendor.” Not yet having revealed the frustrations under which the seeming buoyancy occurs, Sebastian goes over the top in conjuring away any weakness. He establishes that he belongs to a line of circus stars; that his father was a musician (“He could have been great, but he was a drunk”); that he was divorced from a professor of archaeology (“She lives in Cairo”); that he murdered his former business partner (once Thea’s husband, and now she being nominally married to Hans, the third member of the troupe). The judge, acknowledging that curiosity, not law, is up for grabs, thrills in knowing that Sebastian killed with his first dagger thrust and stabbed three more times. (But the little man’s documentation has become radioactive.) “I support some four or five children; my lawyer has all the facts.”

The judge, then, touching upon “your invention,” drives the proud (or at least vain) vicious one to show something he knows would be deflating. This push-back demonstrating how dialogue functions as a deadly weapon, a poisonous emission, in the hands of rabidity. “Christ, you’re ridiculous with your bloody self-esteem, your lower-class curiosity and tastelessness. Your lack of education and sympathy. I’ve noticed you’re not very clean, Mr. Abrahamsson. You neglect your personal hygiene.” (This causes the judge to shake slightly.) “Underneath your aftershave is a sour smell and filthy corpulence. You put on a clean shirt every day, but I see a tidemark on the collar.” (The judge rubs his face in his handkerchief.) “Your nails aren’t very clean. I despise you.” (The judge is frozen in anger.) “I find you officious, unbelievably ridiculous… Not bad to mix with three world-famous artists.” (The judge bends over and holds his handkerchief over his nose.) “It feels good to pester us with humiliating questions under pretense of decency and discretion. Pulling down our trousers and giving us a spanking… I’ll demand a judge who is on my level. You’re unable to either understand or judge our work. You’re dull! Lock me up now, for contempt or whatever…” (Whereas Sebastian has touched upon the reckless incorrectness of the matter, the Tom Ewell-like mouse, with his Marilyn suddenly in the vicinity, is a far more considerable player than the pyromaniac is able to fathom.) “I admit I sweat profusely. I’ve seen many specialists about it, it’s all metabolism.” (The emissions of the judge cannot, in fact, be wrapped up by medical analysis.) “I can understand that it bothers you. The smell, that is. But I will not accept that I am dirty. No one washes as often as I do…” (Do these libations link to a wide-ranging ripple of sensibility?) “You say I’m lower-class. I don’t know about that, it’s a flexible concept—like everything else. My parents were well-off, my father was a lawyer, my mother a teacher. I dare say we [he and his siblings] were brought up well.” (Cut to the adversary, sneering behind his hand, and behind his nearly eternal shades. The former jail inmate has, with this interplay, shown to be not only cynical but a deranged cynic, perhaps driving the other two to the trademark of graft in their dubious fortunes.)

“I immediately sensed your animosity,” the host attains, putting into to a level of reflection beyond the sensationalist’s rude and stupid hopelessness. “And as I pointed out, it grieves me and makes me insecure.” (Now Sebastian sees that he’s over his head, and begins to inhale in some stress.) “All this has been upsetting to both of us, so I suggest we say goodbye. I won’t take your outburst to heart. Will you find your own way out? I wish you a speedy recovery and look forward to tonight’s performance. I can understand your strong emotions.” (Quick pan from judge to Sebastian, now incensed again, the latter’s cigarette hand covering his eyes as he lolls on the sofa, perhaps seeing weakness in the sense of civility and perhaps relishing a trump card along lines of holy impudence.) “Not only are you nasty and repulsive, but you’re a crappy actor to boot… You’re ruthless, immoral and rotten. People like you don’t deserve to live.” (That latter, pointed ugliness, eventually returning in the Bergman film, Autumn Sonata [1978].)

That jailbird, no longer seen to be part of a profound endeavor, becomes an oblique alarm in a very dangerous surrounding. The judge remonstrates, “I’m embarrassed on behalf of you and myself. I’m incapable of feeling aggression. I’m only seized with a feeling of impotence”—Thea having told Sebastian what a lousy lover he was. Same word, different meaning. “I beg you,” the judge calls out, “go at once!” This elicits from the burning man a melodramatic stance with hands clasped over his head and shaking like a holy roller. “That’s how it is… Mother of God! That’s as it should be… I have seen it and there’s no return!” (Cut to the judge, pouring sweat.) Sebastian, voice-over: “I have no family. Nothing to live for…” The summoned, now the crazed summoner. “Don’t worry, I won’t touch you, that would be too vile. Just sit down.” Sebastian tears off his jacket in the mode of a matador and puts on another show. “I’ll tell you about an act that Hans [the third wheel] and I have performed. ‘A man enters a police station to report something peculiar [something like the play, “Rhinoceros”]. What is it he wants to report? He’s been seized by a huge appetite. He ate his wife, a shop assistant, his two children and his grandmother. [NB, hungry to be notorious, and then be handsomely apologetic, and live forever—a cheap scammers resort]. Then a bearded man entered the shop, God himself. He cut out a fillet of God’s shank and ate it. He had an irresistible urge to shit and then he went to the police’—“Calm down, I’m near the end.” ‘He lifts his cranium, which he’d sawed off.’ (Blasphemy and advantage. Immortality by way of drama!) ‘His head was empty. At the bottom was a string for the eyelids, but that was it.’” (Recall the surrealist eyebrow, in the film, Dreams [1955].)

“Are you calm now?” Sebastian, the paradoxical catechist asks. One more question, the literal, somewhat absurdist pedant poses—your religion? And that ignites more nonsense. “I have no religion. I don’t belong to any faith. I don’t need a god, salvation or eternal life. I’m my own god, I supply my own angels and demons. I reside on a stony beach which sinks into a sheltering ocean. A dog is barking, a child is crying. The day closes and turns to night.” He slaps the judge on his chest and grabs him, saying, “You can’t intimidate me! No human being will ever frighten me again. I have a prayer that I say to myself in the absolute silence. ‘May there be a wind to stir the sea and the sultry dusk. May a bird fly in from the sea and scatter the silence with its call.’” The hardness of life savoring its gifts; and this all too inventive, scattered player sending them promptly back.

The judge, not in the business of easiness, enters a church in search of useful ingredients. The stone statues are archaic, but with some gentle expressivity. Four candles burn. There is the ingredient he needs, being elusive. “Father, I don’t want to confess, but I need someone to talk to. “I’m listening,” he hears from the priest, being Bergman himself, far from cordial. Into the confessional, we find the judge on the other side of the grill between them, his presence dispersed within the vertical field—that being a graphic rendition of the “movement” Thea embraced, only to ditch it. “I think I’m going to die. Strangely enough I’m, scared. On my way home yesterday, I had to sit down on a bench. I felt as if I was already dead.” (Panning close to him.) “My body had a stench I’ve never noticed before. There’s an abnormal heat, of course, and my weak heart. And then my old father’s death.” (He wears a commemorative armband.) “Try as one may, everything changes… What am I saying. I’m talking through my hat.” (His faced plunging into a handkerchief.) “People can pardon each other, can’t they?” (An odd place to touch upon the possibility that much must be held in solitary.) “There is an earthly grace. But outside the fragile circle of human warmth cruelty reigns, forever in all eternity… I know you’re not laughing at me. You must be familiar with the phenomenon from your practice. You’ll know that non-believers often pray…” (to something hard to define). “It gives me relief in my pain… My mother has died. No one will hear me if I call out…” And, then, a troubling capitulation: “I daren’t walk on the floors because of the animals. I have to stay in bed.” (Cut to the stone Madonna. Three candles to left, and at right, a flame glowing. In that place of refuge, but not innovation, he dallies, “If I start to cry from anxiety, I’ll be even more afraid.”)

The last careful eccentric under a tiny cloud, namely, Hans, considerably older and far more congenial than the first two strutting their stuff, had been kept two hours waiting on account of the judge’s rocky night. Such missing the boat, for the actor playing, Hans, namely, Gunner Bjornstrand, had become a stock measure of knowing better and yet ultimately sliding back to superficiality, in several Bergman films. We’ll see Hans disgusted with the troupe and yet carrying on, long after the judge’s death. We first see him this day, in the course of the pedantry of the judge, in close-up, with his hands tightly covering his face from the specific boredom and a long-term boredom. Soon, however, the two more mature figures smooth over the irregularity and begin with the subject of Sebastian’s remarkable hostility. Hans quickly excuses his colleague by way of his apparently being struck by a series of infections. “He takes the matter too seriously… I’ve stopped fretting over professional matters long ago. I do my best, that’s all. It’s only natural your judicial system wants to investigate this. The penalty is lenient if we’re found guilty. The fine has been deposited in a bank nominated by you.” The judge replies, “I’m delighted to hear that we have the same attitude.” Do they, though? Hans had been part of a revolutionary-cum-hot-entertainment package for years (forget about their register). There would be volatile factors based upon an avant-garde of long-standing. The reflective judge and his moonlighting would look to the sunny side and shun the vast darkness of the matter, a matter of “movement,” which, despite the millions they reap, has beaten them down to a cheap rite.

Once again the little scholar asks, “Who among you is the creative force?” Hans, the smoothy, feels the need, then, to emphasize that incisive cooperation has shone upon their labors of love. “We share thoughts and feelings, we know one another’s reactions. If you perform day in, day out, in such an utterly demanding environment, you eventually merge into an integrated body. That doesn’t prevent our having different views on this and that.” The not so shabby savvy of the questioner had asked for specific dimensions of their magic; he was given a scheme of corporate wealth, not unlike the priorities of Hollywood.

As if mired in quicksand, Hans, with the theological judge awaiting the troupe’s romantic complications, feels the need to call for Thea’s being exempt from interrogation, on the basis of her emotional lack of equilibrium. Instead of reminding the little man that the matter is an infraction hardly more severe than walking upon a precious lawn, he pushes the health card which seems to the functionary very weak. (We never learn of the antiquated place making the fuss, but it probably involves a silly pseudo-country, like Monaco.) This pushes his image of mature control off a ledge—madly spilling out his humiliation that, though married to her, Thea spends most of her time with the sociopath. “My biggest fear is to be left alone.” Consequently, he offers a bribe of $100,000 to keep his nominal wife out of the process. (“Now I’m really curious,” the student masticates.) Playing along, only to rip up the cheque, he balloons in his studies as to being in the hunt. “I’ll disregard the enormity of your attempt to bribe a civil servant… You must have strong reasons for wanting to stop the meeting.” The meeting occurs. Thea has a sexual fit; the judge rapes her, seemingly requiring a trip to the hospital; and next day, it’s as if nothing happened.

A few declarations before that fuss maintains the real passion. She tells the judge, “I pretend I’m a saint or a martyr, hence the name, Thea.” (Her hands are clasped, as in prayer. “I can sit for hours at the table and look at my palms… I play at going into ecstasy and talking to the Holy Virgin. Belief and unbelief. Defiance and doubt. It’s all a game…I knew you’d be bored.”) The night before the interview, Thea, the saintly player, sits in her dressing room after another lucrative show, and she’s very drunk, by way of a potion called, “Doctor’s Special.” Panning close to her face, she has such a premium of thick cosmetics and a clown nose that she resembles Sebastian and his broad nose. She cries and groans, and Hans asks, “What’s wrong?”/ “I’m so bloody scared of that judge!” Hans counters, “If you panic, I’ll be sitting next door. The day after tomorrow it’ll all be over. We’ll go to the country. I know an inn with great food. If it’s not too hot, we’ll go walking in the woods, sleep under a tree…” (recalling Bjornstrand’s empty rendezvous, in the film, A Lesson in Love, 1954). Feeling some imminent blow-up with Sebastian due to his leaving the troupe, she reminds Hans, “Not long ago you said it was your life’s mission to look after me. You’re my only security”—“security” being a hot-button notion coming to bear in a matter of weeks, with the horror of The Passion of Anna (1969). (“Security” at any cost, being pathologically disastrous.) Hans asks, “Isn’t it better if it’s one big insecurity with other little bursts of security? That’s much closer to reality.” But it strays from the mechanism, the rite, of the demanding clever. His bemusement opens a floodgate of painful candor. “I am tired of you. And I’m tired of Sebastian. I’m tired of you and Sebastian. I’m tired of touring with two lunatics. I’m tired of our so-called artistry. I’ve lost belief in our purpose. We’re pointless, disgusting, ridiculous. We’ve lost our relevance [Thea remarking, “I don’t know what ‘relevance’ means”—a moment flowing back to the film, Dreams, where a crude glutton fails to understand the word, ‘infantile’]. We’re not needed, we’re obsolete… My tedium is limitless. I don’t even feel sorry for you.” The dressing room mirror has been lipsticked, Merde, Shit… “ We’re not worth a tenth of what we earn.” And with classic Bjornstrand weakness, he catches himself, “I don’t know what I’m saying… I never speak about myself…” He takes off his mask and has a drink. “Still, I love you, I do… I feel sorry for you. I’d do anything to spare your discomfort or trouble. Seeing you and Sebastian’s passion worries me. I see you tear each other to pieces. But I should know better. You can say anything, commit any barbarity. Nothing works on you two. You’re monsters. I know it. I recognize it. I can never be like you two. I don’t want to be. Try to listen to me! We have reached the extreme limit. It’s humiliating, degrading. Enough is enough… Do you understand what I’m saying? I’m tired of you… You haven’t understood a word. The world is falling to pieces, burning and bleeding…” She sneers (as Sebastian had sneered upon the judge), “Poor Hans, poor little conscience… It should be this and not that.” He backs himself into, “I believe in common sense” [only recently subscribing]. She asks, “Have I got ugly?” He insists, “No, no, no!” (In the film, Dreams, things come down to, “One has to say ‘no,’ at some point.”)

As an ambulance is (absurdly) dispatched to bring Thea to what she does almost every night on stage, the “assailant” takes a high road: “The deceit must end! I’ve tried to be nice but to no avail.” The next day, Hans and Sebastian (without a word of Thea’s little ride) discuss a shift in their cash-flow in light of international unpleasantness—a Far East tour cancelled by a war, and their U.S. tour in danger because of the indecency fuss—amounting to a loss of about a million each. Sebastian, a picture of chic, cosmopolitan wealth, remarks, “How annoying, to say the least.” Hans deduces, “You’ll realize I can’t go on lending you money forever. Here’s an account of your finances: balance in my favor, 296,000 franks.” The debtor reminds. “My part of the house in Ascona will be worth something.” The creditor reminds him, “I bought your share when you had that tax bill in Scandinavia.” No problems, it seems, Sebastian merely borrows some more money! The tenor of such burning away of money (as in burning away of bedding) appears to be some vague, rather ridiculous idea of disinterestedness, in the light of their wretched rite, rigged to be coming up roses. The jailbird rebounds, “Tell Baur I’ll do another season, but I need an advance…” (Hans continues to describe a changed world, but it seems they’ve all amassed fortunes never to encounter poverty. The next big shift would be working as solo acts. Hans, at least for that afternoon, is very bullish on this because he was almost ready to retire. He floats the [now ideal] idea of Sebastian and Thea becoming a duo act. No dice, apparently.) Going back to the solidity of money, Hans has taken care of remembering that the expensive dresser is 12,000 kronor overdrawn in his chequeing account, which is met with more strong spirits. Also, there is Hans’ concern about who should pay Thea’s hotel bills (one guess), she being beyond such transactions. (More cut-price disinterestedness.) Before running off to pick up his no doubt rare car from the repair shop, Sebastian, having shown an outlaw style, drives Hans to divulge his hots, his advantage, namely, the way to induce Thea into a multiple orgasm. With the tricks proudly described, he’s driven to scripture, no less, “I love her in the spirit of the Epistle to the Corinthians,” which prompts Sebastian to rattle off the text, “Love always trusts, always hopes… also perseveres, and so on…” Then, from out of that union, Sebastian asks, “Tell me something, do you detest me?”/ “No, far from it,” Hans assures. “But I used to like you more… Before you started drinking and got sloppy… I even admired you. I thought you were a warm person, full of life” [though a murderer]… You had something, Thea did, too… Light… You may smile. There is no other word for it, light! It’s the light that Thea and I are busy extinguishing.”

As that nadir begins to bite, Hans and Sebastian visit the judge to propose a presentation/ interpretation of the troupe, at its succinct best, after that evening’s show. The student of art records, “I agreed to their modest request that no other audience be present” [at a room in the courthouse]. The preamble spotlights Thea and the judge seeming to be fast friends. “I was so relieved when the doctor said it wasn’t serious. You’ve quite recovered?”/ “Just tired from the medication…”/ “I hope this won’t be too hard.”/ “Not for me. I just beat the drum and talk some nonsense.” The scenario propounds to carry the passions of Hans when he was a child. “Our imaginations were stimulated!” (Stimulated by anger?)

The little man presiding formally, is in fact at their mercy, like the sheep and a whole roster of victims about to explode in, The Passion of Anna. His “curiosity,” his need for cogency, can’t resist daring, in the middle of the night with a fragile heart, to cross a mob, one of the billions who have, in fact, nothing to offer a serious reflection, a serious love of life. The first optic becomes a medieval sword (for medieval hearts), thrust in his face. Still underestimating his peril—a perilous Pauline in the offing, years hence—the host walks into, “So it’s not that simple?” Sebastian barks out, “No, it’s not that simple?” despite his being a pig for the simple. Hans adds, “Call it an intercession”—he still stinging from a refusal to be a smooth intercessor. “Artists are such sensitive creatures.” (How would he know, having been nothing all his life but a Hollywood joke? Surely knowing where the money is, Hans melodramatically intones, “It may be meaningless but now and then we’re all seized by the desire to kneel or pray. A ritual game,” a rite. (The judge in the church had, in his adult way, eschewed facile showboating, while maintaining, however awkwardly, true interplay, true rite.)

Getting around to the rape—“You, yourself experienced weakness, a sensual longing for surrender. Perhaps as a child”—Sebastian continues, “At a given moment I raise a bag filled with wine and stab it from underneath. The wine gushes down, into a vessel.” Thea beats the drum. Each of the actors places a threatening mask to intensify aggression. By this time, the judge is sweating profusely and begins to tremble. He calls out, “I have something to tell you. My father wanted me to be a lawyer like him and his father before him. I had no choice in the matter.” (This connectivity blooms virulently in subsequent films of Bergman.) “I’m only doing my duty! I wanted to see the act at close range.” (More Ionesco, as if lawyering breeds rape.) “Maybe it was a secret need to… I don’t know. I take and give orders… I don’t understand what drives you or your relationships… I have always been afraid… What am I saying? I must calm down. It’s two in the morning, we’re all tired. Why are you smiling Mr. Fisher?” (Sebastian fishing for trouble.) The judge covers his face, leaving him more lost than he really is. His fingernails have been bitten to the quick. (Far from a rite that could lift him. ) A buzzer explodes. They surround him, and he finds a way to say, “No more fear… Dear artists, you’ll never have a more rewarding and involve audience.” Fisher’s sword now shows the handle to be sexually erect. He slaps the judge’s face many times. The judge calls out, “You hit it on the head, Mr. Fisher. I admire your physical daring. Your hand touched my skin which is burning. But it also touched my memories as a human being. You have hit me and humiliated yourself…” The violence is in the mode of Jenet’s, The Balcony. The latter two sentences are in the mode of Bergman.

“Maybe not, maybe you feel satisfaction and pleasure,” Sebastian crows. (More Genet.) Sebastian smashes the judge’s face, and the latter falls off his chair and on to the floor. The judge tells them, “Look how my hands are shaking. And I want to cry. I suppose it’s a form of desolation… To lean against someone, to find warmth and security in someone’s arms.” He struggles to stand up. “What a drama! I’ll happily admit there’s a measure of cruelty also in my profession. How else would it be possible.” (“The Theater of Cruelty,” a notion of French theatrical inventor, Antonin Artaud, comes by as another strange homage to the little man who cherished something necessarily wild and necessarily gentle. He calls out, close to death, “I’m asking you artists. You must know. You know. Start your performance.” Their “performance” is a few obsolete postures, in lifting the vessel, and surrounding the judge. Hans adds, “I then drink from the vessel, swallowing the reflection. That is the act in short…” Cut to the judge, sweating and gasping and looking up. He says, “I understand.”

In an epilogue we are treated not so much to the conflict’s irony, but the irony of sensibility itself. “A doctor was summoned. He established that Dr. Abrahamson had dies from a heart attack. The three artists were subsequently convicted for the pantomimic art they called, ‘The Rite.’ They paid their fines, gave some interviews and toward the end of the summer they went on a holiday. They never returned to the country in question.”

#ingmar bergman

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greed-the-dorkalicious · 7 years

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So as some of you know, I’ve been working on chapter 8 of BLaD, but now that I’m working on the rewrite it probably won’t be finished for quite some time. Plus I have no idea how many scenes I’m going to have to change, and I can already see some problems with this one... A lot of it, if not almost all of it, will probably be scrapped. But I don’t want what I’ve already written to go to waste, so I’m going to post it here.

Chapter 8, about half finished, still labeled as chapter 7 in the doc:

“I want a TV for my room.”

Dio raised an eyebrow as he glanced up from his chair at Jonathan, who was looming over Dio with his arms crossed and lips drawn tight into a frown.

“Making demands now, are we?” Dio questioned amusedly. “And here I thought you were polite.”

“After everything you’ve put me through, I see no reason to be polite. You told me I could have whatever I want- except for, you know, my freedom- so I want my own TV,” Jonathan repeated.

Dio snorted. “Really, where have your manners gone? What would that little wife of yours say?”

Jonathan actually laughed out loud at that. “You’re joking, right? Some of the most vulgar things I’ve ever heard anyone say were things Erina said about you,” he pointed out bitterly.

Dio frowned briefly, looking grave for a moment, before quickly returning to his usual smug demeanor.

“Fine. I’ll see to it that you get a TV,” he promised.

Jonathan smiled slightly, nodding in satisfaction. “Th- Good,” he said, quickly correcting himself after almost saying “thank you”; politeness was a habit for him, but it was a courtesy Dio did not deserve.

Dio snickered at Jonathan’s slip-up, but Jonathan paid it no mind as he abruptly turned around to leave. He walked with conviction, not in the mood to be in Dio’s company any longer than necessary.

“By the way, a friend of mine will be joining us for dinner tomorrow,” Dio called after him.

Jonathan ignored the offhand comment, leaving the room without looking back.

---

Dio had stayed true to his word, and within a few hours a TV was brought to Jonathan’s room, along with a lovely wooden cabinet to house it.

“Alright, that should do it,” d’Arby declared as he arranged some cords so they were out of the way. “Let me know if you have any problems.”

“Thank you,” Jonathan told him. From what he’d heard from Jotaro, d’Arby wasn’t exactly a shining beacon of morality, but Jonathan still just couldn’t help but be polite to anyone other than Dio.

D’Arby nodded, and placed the remote on the nightstand before leaving the room, shutting the door behind him.

Several moments after d’Arby had left, as Jonathan studied the TV’s remote, Jotaro materialized in the air next to him. Though he did catch the telltale shimmer of light out of the corner of his eye, it felt more like Jonathan sensed Jotaro’s appearance than anything.

“Why do you need a TV in your room?” Jotaro asked, sounding slightly puzzled, although (as usual) his face showed little trace of emotion.

Jonathan smiled at Jotaro. “It’s for you, silly,” he answered with a slight laugh.

Jotaro frowned in confusion. “For… me?” he repeated hesitantly, confused by the answer. A TV? For him? Why?

“I thought it would be nice, give you something fun to do when I’m reading or whatever,” Jonathan replied. “And the only other TV is in the living room, and I know you don’t come out when there might be other people around, so now you can watch whatever you want without having to hide,” he explained with a gentle smile.

This... was surprising to Jotaro. Which was to be expected; He'd spent the past month living a solitary, hellish existence, with his friends and family gone. His only companion was Jonathan, who was nice enough, but usually busy with his own misery. Jotaro had almost forgotten what it was like to actually receive attention and care from someone else.

"...Thanks," he said honestly, feeling somewhat speechless.

Perhaps Jotaro's face showed more gratitude than his voice did, because Jonathan smiled widely, seemingly quite pleased with his accomplishment. "You're welcome! I hope you like it," he said excitedly.

Hesitantly, Jotaro reached for the remote, staring at it for a moment with a feeling he couldn’t place. Suspicion? Hostility? Some sort of vague feeling like it wasn’t real? It had been so long since any sort of positive anything had happened to him, it almost seemed like his brain (...his figurative brain, anyway) had deemed it a trap of some sort, that it was too good to be true, there had to be some sort of catch. The very concept of something good happening had become so foreign to Jotaro that it made him anxious. It felt like if he dared to indulge in a moment of pleasure, he would suffer even more in punishment.

“...Jotaro? Are you alright?” Jonathan interrupted, pulling Jotaro back to reality.

“Yeah, why?” Jotaro answered.

“Well, it’s just… You’ve been staring at the remote for a while now,” Jonathan pointed out worriedly.

“Oh. Uh, sorry,” Jotaro replied with a frown. What was he doing?

Jotaro shook his head in disbelief, and tried to remind himself that there was nothing wrong. As bizarre as it felt, the TV truly was a good thing- his and Jonathan’s only, not one of Dio’s shallow luxuries, but a thoughtful gift from Jonathan to make Jotaro more comfortable. The TV was safe.

With Jonathan watching him excitedly, Jotaro turned the TV on and began flipping through channels.

It took a little while before Jotaro found something he liked. He caught snippets of soap operas, talk shows, news, reality shows, cartoons, and documentaries, but none of them really caught his eye. Not to mention the language barrier; Jotaro was fluent in Japanese and English, and knew a fair bit of Italian, but naturally, everything on TV in Cairo was in Arabic.

Finally, Jotaro found something he instantly recognized: a familiar movie that was surprisingly not in Arabic, but English with Arabic captions.

“Ooh, this looks interesting. I wonder what it is?” Jonathan commented, watching the people on TV run around.

“It’s called ‘Star Wars’,” Jotaro answered. “It’s a movie about… Well, war. In space. Pretty self-explanatory. It’s one of the old man’s favorite movies.”

Jonathan watched the TV with interest for a few minutes. It certainly seemed fun and dramatic, but it was also clearly in the middle of the movie, so Jonathan didn’t really understand what was going on.

“Is that the protagonist?” he asked Jotaro, indicating the character currently speaking: a man with brown hair, a vest, and a gun.

Jotaro shook his head. “That’s Han Solo. He’s a smuggler. He’s gramps’ favorite character, he always used to say Han reminded him of himself when he was younger,” Jotaro said.

“Well, he’s certainly rude enough,” Jonathan agreed with a laugh. Jotaro, however, said nothing in response; he had gone quiet, frowning after accidentally bringing up a sore subject.

Jotaro stayed silent for several more minutes before finally speaking.

“He took me to see the sequel twice, you know,” he began quietly. “We were visiting in New York when I was 10. The first time, we all went- me, mom, dad, gramps, and grandma… He liked it so much he wanted to see it again, but nobody else wanted to, so I said I’d go with him.” Jotaro paused for a moment before continuing, looking thoughtful.

“...I didn’t really want to see it twice,” he admitted, voice shaking slightly. “I just…” Jotaro trailed off, unable to continue. With eyes downcast, Jotaro ran his hands through his hair, repeating a nervous habit Jonathan had seen him do so many times.

Jonathan put a hand on Jotaro’s shoulder in a silent gesture of sympathy.

“You really loved your grandfather, didn’t you?” Jonathan asked gently.

Jotaro nodded, face buried in his hands. “I should’ve… I should’ve said so. I should’ve been nicer to him. And mom…”

“I know. It’s alright. I felt the same way when I lost my father,” Jonathan admitted. “There’s no point in worrying about it now. I’m sure your family knows how much you care about them,” he promised.

Jotaro said nothing, continuing to hide his face as he tried to compose himself. Jonathan respectfully left him alone, though he himself almost felt like he might cry.

After a few minutes, Jotaro managed to calm down, and let out a tired sigh as he returned his attention to the TV.

“So, do you think you can tell me a bit about the plot?” Jonathan asked, seeing that Jotaro had settled down.

Jotaro nodded, and began pointing out characters on screen. “The blond guy is Luke Skywalker, he’s the protagonist. The girl is Princess Leia. The creepy looking guy in black is the main villain, Darth Vader, and the old dude is Ben Kenobi, he’s sort of the mentor character,” he explained.

Jonathan watched with interest, nodding thoughtfully as he took in this information. “So, is the princess the protagonist’s girlfriend?” he asked curiously.

“Nah, she’s his twin sister, although they don’t know it yet. Also, Vader’s their dad,” Jotaro answered.

“Hey! Why’d you have to ruin the plot twist?” Jonathan gasped, looking slightly hurt and offended.

Jotaro blinked in surprise. “Oh, sorry,” he said casually.

Jonathan shook his head in dismay, but nonetheless returned his attention to the movie.

“Woah, those swords look fun,” he commented in awe.

“They’re called lightsabers,” Jotaro explained. “Pay attention, this scene’s important.”

As Jotaro said, Jonathan paid close attention to the battle on screen, as two characters- the villain and the mentor, he recalled- dueled with glowing swords. Jonathan could hardly bring himself to blink as the lightsabers clashed again and again, producing brightly colored flashes and strange noises, and then-

“...Did… did he just die?” Jonathan questioned hesitantly, staring at the pile of brown cloth where the mentor character had stood. (From what little he’d seen, he couldn’t help but think that that character reminded him of his own old teacher, Will Zeppeli.)

“Yeah. It’s cool though, he shows up as a ghost every so often,” Jotaro answered, showing little emotional reaction to the scene he’d clearly seen many times before.

“Aw, stop telling me everything-”

Before Jonathan could finish his sentence, a loud knock came at the door. Next to him, Jotaro disappeared just as quickly as Ben Kenobi, while Jonathan sighed at the interruption.

“Come in,” he called out unenthusiastically. Of course their moment of leisure couldn’t have gone uninterrupted, he should have known.

The door opened with a creak, revealing, of course, d’Arby.

“Lord Dio would like me to inform you that dinner will be served in 20 minutes,” d’Arby announced.

Jonathan frowned irritatedly. Of course. Of course.

“Fine,” he replied simply. “Is that all?”

“Yes,” d’Arby replied tersely. He nodded his head in a polite gesture of acknowledgement before leaving, shutting the door behind him.

Jonathan sighed once again and flopped down on the bed, one hand behind his head. “So much for finishing the movie, I suppose,” he mumbled to the empty air, as Jotaro was still hiding. Knowing him, Jonathan guessed he wouldn’t be back for a good five minutes or so.

The clock on the wall ticked ominously, Jonathan’s stomach growled, Luke Skywalker screamed, and Jonathan groaned in frustration at everything.

---

Reluctantly, Jonathan entered the dining room at the specified time. Although Dio had said one of his “friends” would be joining them for dinner, there didn’t seem to be anyone there but Dio.

“Hello, Jojo. How are you enjoying your new TV?” Dio asked, leaning casually against a wall with his arms crossed.

“It’s- Hold on, you’re wearing that to dinner?” Jonathan questioned in disbelief, raising an eyebrow and wincing slightly at Dio’s… “outfit”, which seemed to be more hole than clothes.

“Yes, why?” Dio replied with a shrug.

Jonathan took a deep, sharp breath in as he continued to grimace at Dio’s outfit with a mixture of disgust and pity.

“You know, considering that is my body, I’d really prefer it if you wore something… More modest and less ugly,” he said slowly.

Dio rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on. I’ve seen you wear three shirts and a vest at the same time. You are not in any position to judge my fashion sense,” he pointed out.

“At least my three shirts covered my nipples,” Jonathan retorted with a scowl.

“My nipples are perfectly covered!” Dio insisted.

“Sure, until you move at all. God knows how you even managed to get that thing on without getting tangled up,” Jonathan said dryly.

“Oh, stop being dramatic. You sound like an old lady.”

Before Jonathan could respond, the argument was interrupted by a knock on the doorframe, and an attention-grabbing cough.

“Ah, Pucci! Good to see you!” Dio exclaimed with an unsettling amount of genuine feeling, as Jonathan turned to look at the newcomer.

Whatever sort of vile monster Jonathan had expected Dio’s “friend” to be, the person standing in the doorway was not it. Rather, Dio’s “friend” appeared to be a teenager, with short, silvery-blond hair contrasting against his dark skin, wearing what looked to be some sort of priest’s robes. He leaned against the doorframe with a slight hint of a smile.

While Dio and the newcomer engaged in some sort of conversation, Jonathan couldn’t focus on what they were saying. He was too shocked and uncomfortable with how… innocent the young man in the doorway seemed to be. This was Dio’s “friend”? A priest? And a young one at that! How old was he, Jonathan wondered? 18? 19? Perhaps he wasn’t really a young priest, but some sort of shapeshifter, secretly a 40-year-old criminal mastermind… or… something. Jonathan hoped that was the case. The thought of this boy being under Dio’s thumb was enough to make him feel sick.

“Jojo, I’d like you to meet my friend, Enrico Pucci. Pucci, this is my adoptive brother, Jonathan Joestar,” Dio introduced the two.

“I’ve heard so much about you. It’s nice to finally meet you,” Pucci said as he offered Jonathan his hand. He gave a smile that was unsettlingly warm- that was to say, it was genuinely friendly, which was the unsettling part. A friend of Dio’s shouldn’t seem so… normal.

“Um… Hello,” Jonathan replied confusedly, shaking Pucci’s hand with slight hesitation. What was the catch? There had to be a catch, right?

“How was the trip?” Dio asked Pucci casually as the three of them sat down.

“Oh, I can’t complain. I slept through most of it, after all,” Pucci replied. “I am pretty hungry, though. What are we having for dinner?”

“Steak and caviar, unless you’d like something else,” Dio answered.

“No, that sounds great, actually.”

As Dio and Pucci continued talking, Jonathan stared at them, completely slack-jawed. Their conversation was just so bizarrely normal. Civil. Friendly. It sounded like a conversation between an actual, real, ordinary pair of friends, and not a teenage priest and a hundred-year-old mass murderer vampire with a god complex. Jonathan had seen so many strange, twisted, horrifying things over his weeks at Dio’s mansion, and indeed in his life, that they’d become the norm. Seeing Dio, the devil himself, act so sweet and casual was far more unsettling than anything he’d seen yet.

Evidently, Jonathan’s horror and confusion showed on his face, as Pucci glanced at him with a concerned look. “Is something wrong?”

Jonathan stammered awkwardly, struggling to express his feelings in words. “I… you… I don’t-”

“You’ll have to forgive my brother, he’s been dead for a century,” Dio interrupted. “He’s still getting used to things and he’s a bit confused right now.”

Jonathan shot Dio an incredulous glare. “I am not!” he insisted. Pucci, on the other hand, had a more sympathetic look on his face.

“I understand. This must be quite disorienting for you. I’m sorry,” he told Jonathan, putting a hand on his shoulder in a gesture of comfort that felt, frankly, quite condescending.

“Really, I’m fine,” Jonathan repeated, but didn’t press the issue further. Instead, he decided to change the subject.

“So… Pucci, was it? Are you a priest?” Jonathan asked. He kept his tone polite, though he was suspicious of Pucci; Whether Pucci was another unwitting, naive victim of Dio’s charisma, or if he truly was of Dio’s character, Jonathan didn’t know. It was bad either way.

Pucci laughed slightly. “No, no, I still have a long way to go before then. I’m in training at a seminary in Florida. I only started less than two years ago,” he explained.

“And… how old are you?” Jonathan continued, somewhat dreading the answer.

“Sixteen. I met Dio last year,” Pucci replied with a smile. Jonathan felt his stomach drop.

As Jonathan looked at Dio with a wide-eyed, open-mouthed expression of pure horror, Dio deliberately ignored him. Instead, he turned towards the doorway.

“D’Arby! What’s taking so long?!” Dio shouted. Though he was only mildly irritated, his commanding aura made his shout as terrifying as a normal person’s rage. (Pucci seemed unfazed.)

Within seconds, the sound of startled footsteps could be heard coming from down the hall, and d’Arby appeared in the doorway, looking slightly nervous.

“My sincerest apologies, Lord Dio. The new chef isn’t quite used to the kitchen yet, but I will ensure he works faster,” d’Arby promised.

Dio raised an eyebrow. “What new chef?”

“If you may recall, Lord Dio, you ate the previous chef,” d’Arby explained.

“Did I,” Dio replied in an uninterested monotone.

“Yes. You did.”

Dio sighed. “Very well, but if the food’s going to take this long, at least bring out the wine,” he told d’Arby with an air of boredom.

D’Arby nodded and bowed deeply. “Yes, Lord Dio. I will get right on that.” D’Arby immediately backed out of the room, presumably to go fulfill Dio’s orders.

By the time Dio finished his conversation with d'Arby, Jonathan had- for the most part- regained his composure enough to continue speaking.

“Pucci, this may be something of a difficult question, but… Are you aware of what sort of person Dio is?” Jonathan asked cautiously.

“Yes,” Pucci replied. A simple one-word response, but unwavering, with a terse, brisk conviction that said he knew exactly what Jonathan meant.

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poisontcngue · 6 years

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basics:

full name: adrian ganeev raja nicknames: the wizard age: twenty-five birthday: 7 july birthplace: cairo, egypt hometown: jericho, vermont nationality: american ethnicity: english & indian sexuality: bisexual languages: english and hindi, french occupation: dj & cohost of handsome darcy & the wizard��s radio show accent: none

abilities:

element: air training ( 6 / 10 ): adrian has been aware of his abilities for his whole life, and while he certainly isn’t a master airbender, he’s definitely learned to adapt to suit his own personality best. his best trick is manipulating air currents to create sounds health ( 8 / 10 ): perfectly average. can probably take a few hits and keep going but would very much prefer not to intelligence ( 7 / 10 ): all of adrian’s thought process goes into avoiding conflict. he’s good at defusing situations or talking his way out of a conflict instead of fighting speed ( 7 / 10 ): adrian can move fast, using air currents to speed himself up and move around as he needs to strength ( 6 / 10 ): his abilities are mostly for annoying people, but the ability to make amplify sounds can probably be quite painful and disarming if he times it right dexterity ( 7 / 10 ): a natural ability to stay on his feet is a given, and adrian uses it to his advantage weapon(s) of choice: none, but has an air nomad staff somewhere in his house, he’s pretty sure overall ranking: ( 6.8 / 10 )

appearance:

hair color & style: dark brown, varying from how much he wants to look like darcy, can be buzzed short or down to his shoulders, always in a manbun if its long enough eye color: dark brown complexion: olive skin that rarely burns and tans well distinguishing marks: darcy who looks just like him and is probably right next to him, thoughtful expression & grungy facial hair height: five feet ten inches build: relatively skinny, not overly muscular tattoos: ufo on right shoulderblade (x), his mother’s birthday in the crook of his left elbow in roman numerals (x), eventual/in progress tattoos: shiva outline on left arm (x) piercings: one in right ear

personality:

positive traits: insightful, easygoing, & a mediator negative traits: demanding, melodramatic, & single-minded mbti: isfp-t, the adventurer moral alignment: neutral good zodiac sign: cancer sun, gemini moon: the sky wire (x)

family:

father: kabir raja (psychologist) mother: maxine raja (art historian), deceased siblings: identical twin darcy & younger sister cleo raja pets: none other significant relatives: none

health & medical:

allergies: none smokes: yes, but only when drunk drinks: yes drugs: toned down alot from high school and college, but still does drugs almost every big music event he attends eating habits: never got over late night snacking, prefers food that is portable exercise habits: mostly does cardio two or three times a week, every other week, depending on his work load and his mood

misc:

theme song: easy by son lux aesthetic: late night take-out, an old jacket that fits perfectly, the scratch of a record, pine needles, reaching out to hold hands in the dark favorite animal: cows favorite shows: chopped, stranger things, inuyasha, the x-files favorite movies: princess mononoke, beetlejuice, the matrix music taste: hipster shit, as always, like son lux, tv on the radio, the national. he’s also come to enjoy your run of the mill top 40 hits, too

#development: adrian #development

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travelling-trooper-blog · 6 years

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There were four things I knew I wanted to do during my time in Africa:

Climb Mount Kilimanjaro

See lions, elephants, and giraffes on a safari

Work with the beautiful women of Living Positive Kenya

Bungee jump over Victoria Falls

Yesterday, I managed to check number four off of that list.

However, for a while there, I wasn’t sure I was even going to be able to get into the country.

Two weeks ago, a friend instructed me to make sure to withdraw American money before leaving for Zimbabwe. The country is literally strapped for cash. People sleep outside the banks here, waiting desperately until the next time the bank has access to more money. People may have money in their accounts, but the bank doesn’t have money to give them.

The reason? For several years, the country ran a trade deficit, importing more than twice of what it exports. The result is that there’s just not enough physical money to go around.

To solve this problem, last year Cairo’s African Export-Import Bank, provided $200 million so that Zimbabwe could print $200 million worth of its own bond notes, which are equivalent to US dollars.

The government also limited the amount of money one can take out of the country to $1000.

The whole reason Zimbabwe uses the US dollar is because Mugabe destroyed their own currency in 2009. Mugabe had 100-trillion-dollar notes printed, the economy went down the crapper, and by 2009, one US dollar was equal to 2.6 decimillion dollars. (That’s ten to the power of 33.)

Note: I got this information from a 2016 article from The Atlantic. Several locals, on the other hand, seem to think that Mugabe quite literally had $8 billion hidden under his mattress.

One thing President Mnangangwa has promised to do to help remedy this situation is bring money back into the country. According to an article in the Gazette, many wealthy individuals and corporations have externalized $3 billion to other countries over the last three years. He’s given them from December 1, 2017 to February of next year to return that money. After that, people will face legal consequences.

Why am I telling you this? BECAUSE I’M AN IDIOT AND I FORGOT TO WITHDRAW MONEY IN UGANDA, SO I CAME HERE WITH NO MONEY AND NO CERTAINTY THAT I’D BE ABLE TO PAY FOR MY ENTRY VISA, LET ALONE SURVIVE FOR 9 DAYS!

The realization hit me as soon as I walked into the airport in Uganda. My first thought was to ask for the nearest ATM. Apparently the airport in Entebbe doesn’t have ATMs.

What the what?

Whatever, I’ll just take money out in Ethiopia while I wait for my connecting flight.

Nope.

ATMs only give out local currency, and for some reason, there was no currency exchange place in sight.

Crap!

So I boarded my flight to Victoria Falls uncertain as to how I was going to pay for my entry Visa, since the e-mail I got from my hostel explicityly said that they only accept cash payments for Visas at the airport.

It was a long flight.

I anticipated being stuck at the airport for at least a day. Of course, my bungee reservation was for the next day, so I figured I wouldn’t be able to make it on time.

Crap!

Miraculously, the Visa desk had a card machine and I was able to pay by credit card. Hallelujah!

Next problem: Get American dollars. I didn’t want to pay for EVERYTHING by credit card for the next week.

I had thankfully e-mailed my hostel from Ethiopia and told them of my situation, and they had sent a taxi to the airport to pick me up.

At the hostel, the guy at the desk informed me that since I had gotten the Kaza Visa (thank you Liz from Zambezi Safari & Tours!), I’d be able to walk over to Zambia after my bungee jump and take out some American money. Hallelujah!

Had I gotten the normal Visa like most bungee jumpers, I would have had to pay another $50 to enter Zambia.

The Victoria Falls Bridge is right at the Zambia-Zimbabwe border, so I could literally get my passport stamped, walk across the border to the nearest hotel, and take out money.

With that settled, I was ready for my jump!

The plummet

The view from the plummet

I had purchased what they call the “Big Air Experience.” That means that I was booked for bungee jumping, the gorge swing, and the zipline.

Now I have gone skydiving in Toronto, paragliding in Korea, and ziplining in both Canada and Nicaragua; but I can say without a doubt, that bungee jumping is the most terrifying thing I have ever done.

With skydiving, the fear is only anticipatory. Once you take that leap out of the plane, all of your fears disappear. You don’t feel the rush of a bajillion butterflies fluttering in your stomach; it’s just a blissful freefall.

And with paragliding, sure, your life flashes before your eyes as you run for everything you’re worth towards the edge of the cliff to take that leap, but once your feet leave the ground, your gaze rises to the clouds, and those fears once again disappear.

With bungee jumping, however, I felt like the ratio of crippling fear to joyful adrenaline rush was reversed.

There were so many different emotions going through me in these shots.

So this is how it works:

You step into the harness, and some dude hopefully clips all the right clips and secures all of the straps properly. You’re just watching his every move, thinking, “What does that do? What is that connecting to? Are you sure that goes there? Did you tie that tightly enough?

Then you step through the gate to the platform area and more clips are clipped and more straps are secured.

Then things get weird.

You sit down, and a guy wraps a pair of thick towels around each of your ankles and secures them together with a sling that is attached to your bungee rope. As the sling takes the load, everything is supposed to get tighter. Supposed to…

You then have to waddle over to the edge of the platform, with your feet tied tightly together, and stand with your toes hanging over the edge and your eyes looking straight at the horizon.

Your jump master counts down from five WAAAAY faster than you’d like, and you’re expected to jump as far out as possible with your arms stretched outwards. You’re supposed to jump outwards because if you just fall straight down, you’re likely to tangle and spin.

So here’s why bungee jumping was far scarier than skydiving:

First off, that Dead Man’s Walk to the edge of the platform with your feet tied together was brutal. I half expected myself to lose my balance and just tumble over the edge. I held on to those handles as tightly as possible.

Now, once my mind processed what was happening as the ground came rushing towards me, those three seconds of freefalling were actually the best part of the whole ride. Those butterflies were screaming in my stomach, and I laughed hysterically the entire way down.

Then I bounced back up and began to spin, and I had no idea what was up and what was down anymore. It was really dizzying and completely disorienting. I’m pretty sure if the rope had snapped at this point, I wouldn’t have noticed until it was too late because my head was spinning at a speed of 200 km/hour. To be honest, it was actually kinda fun.

BUT THEN IT STOPPED BEING FUN AGAIN!

As I hung in the air and I noticed for the first time just how shallow the water was directly below me, I couldn’t help but feel like the towels were slipping off from around my ankles. Now, sure, there was a harness around my ankles that was holding me safely in place; and sure, it was probably just all in my head; but holy crap, that was when it really stopped being fun.

I had so many action movies flash through my head. But these weren’t the ones where the hero grabs somebody’s hand or wrist just in time and saves them from falling to their death; no it was the scenes where the hero just can’t hold on. It was the scenes where their fingers are slipping. It was the scenes where the rope snaps just a second too soon. With every bounce, I felt like the towels were slipping further and further down my ankles. I wanted those guys to pull me up IMMEDIATELY!

They started pulling me up, and soon enough, there was a sitting in a harness in mid-air, waiting to grab me. I’m pretty sure I told him to not let me go. I’m also pretty sure he knew that already.

There was a platform directly underneath the bridge. We were pulled up to the platform, and then I was clipped onto a cable that extended all the way to the end of the bridge so I could walk safely back to the surface…AND DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN!

This time, I was to do the gorge swing.

Round 2

I’d met a Zimbabwean girl in Ngong, Kenya, and she had said that, as a huge thrill seeker, she loved the gorge swing much more than the bungee jump; so I was curious to see what this experience had in store.

Once again, harnesses, straps, and clips were involved.

Once again, the countdown was far quicker than I was comfortable with.

This time, though, I was instructed to just step off the edge and let gravity do the rest.

Sounds easy enough, right?

Nope.

I somehow managed to screw that up.

Rather than falling straight down like a pencil, I felt my body start to lean forwards as I plummeted. Not sure how this would affect my fall, I started kicking my feet like an idiot in a desperate attempt to straighten myself out.

Once again, the butterflies screamed in my stomach like there was a Slayer concert going on inside there.

This time, though, I, too, screamed. Oh, how I did scream. I don’t know if you’ve ever screamed so loud and intensely that you actually wondered if it was even you making that noise, but I sure have. It’s a bizarre and terrifying feeling.

Once the rope tightened and I became a human pendulum, though, everything became right in the world again–except for the fact that the harness was crushing me in a very uncomortable and sensitive area. I’ll leave it at that.

Nonetheless, what a view. I could’ve hung there all day.

Last up was the zipline. That was a piece of cake.

Once back at the hotel, I had just enough time to order lunch before my safari group arrived.

I had signed up for a rhino game drive, since the rhino had eluded me on my Tanzanian safaris. The guy at the desk at my hotel had told me that this tour specifically goes to a certain area known for rhinos. However this turned out to be another regular safari through Zambezi National Park. If I didn’t see rhinos, I was going to be pissed.

The guide asked us which animals we were hoping to see. The two couples in my group were desperate to see lions before leaving Africa, but I made it clear that I wanted to see a blasted rhino.

As you can see, there was certainly plenty of natural beauty to behold, but no signs of rhinos.

Our guide pointed out rhino poop, but I wanted to see a freakin’ rhino, not his excrement!

Thankfully, my fellow tour mates were two retired couples from the UK. They made the tour a lot of fun. I have to say, I hope that when I grow up, I become an old Englishman. They just have the best sense of humour. It was like going on a safari with John Cleese and company.

I perked up when we stopped for a snack break. Our driver got out of the vehicle and popped a grill out from under the hood. He then pulled out a delicious plate of deviled eggs, perogies, sausages, and skeweres of something called kudu.

One of the British guys turned to his friend and said, “You’re going to eat that after just seeing one and commenting on how beautiful it was?!”

His friend replied, “I also saw a cow earlier, but I’m still going to eat my steak for dinner!”

To top it all off, our guide also offered us a cooler of wine and beers! I had three glasses of wine and a beer. Needless to say, we were all in great spirits after our snack break, despite not having seen either a lion or a rhino.

AND THEN WE SAW A RHINO!

Everybody was just tipsy enough that we couldn’t keep our mouths shut. They were all happy for me. Our guide had to shut us up before we scared the momma and baby rhino away.

And with that, the sun went down, and our safari was over. But I saw a rhino! Two, even!

Huzzah!

The Travelling Trooper Goes Bungee Jumping There were four things I knew I wanted to do during my time in Africa: Climb Mount Kilimanjaro…

#Around the world #bungee jump #elephant #giraffe #gorge swing #rhino #safari #Travelblog #trevor the travelling trooper #victoria falls #warthog #zimbabwe

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