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the-pleasure-garden · 7 months

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El club (Pablo Larraín, 2015)

Me encuentro últimamente en un amorío cinéfilo con Pablo Larraín. Sin darme cuenta siempre ha hecho parte de mi vida con películas como Spencer y Jackie. Pero, no había podido verlo de la manera en la que se merece hasta que Sebastián Lelio (Una mujer fantástica) estableció un punto de encuentro en la productora Fábula. Así, en una lista olvidada de películas por ver caí en sus encantos con “NO”. Desde entonces, Larraín se ha vuelto de mi top 3 y celebré con un corto grito cuando ganó el pasado 9 de septiembre en el festival de cine de Venecia con la obra maestra de “El Conde”.

Sin embargo, esto solo es el contexto, en esta oportunidad quisiera hablar de una película que deja un montón de pistas para tomar un camino inesperado: “El Club” (2015). Desde esta colectividad que nos sugiere el título se presenta una invitación para repensar lo que puede estar uniendo a este singular grupo. Cuatro curas exiliados que no caben por completo en la palabra amistad, pero tampoco en la formalidad. Quizá su mejor etiqueta sea la de ser una manada, con todo el instinto animal de supervivencia que esto conlleva. El club de una posible raiz latina de globus que se refiere a círculo y que puede insinuarnos lo que está cerrado, lo que como el círculo no se puede identificar en comienzo o final. Es un grupo ya terminado que no busca abrirse, pero es un grupo animal porque reacciona con tal de que esto se mantenga. Si la intención es de sobrepensar más con esta metáfora, quizá son incluso un fragmento de la manada, esa parte que queda al fondo por varias, pero siempre desafortunadas razones. Siguen siendo parte del líder de los de enfrente, aún cuando han armado una propia realidad allí al fondo.

El punto en común de estos hombres, curas, gira entorno a una generalidad del pecado pero a todo el amplio catálogo de las faltas que se pueden cometer. Son 4 padres, con un quinto efímero, que representan, bajo la mirada de Larraín, los típicos tropos del cura pecador desde una perspectiva que nos recuerda la singularidad de las experiencias de cada uno. Mediante uno de esos recursos insignias del director: las entrevistas en un formato de plano contraplano, nos enteramos por un tiempo muy preciso de cada una de estas historias que los llevaron al exilio. Es un tiempo muy preciso, y quizá precioso por lo mismo, ya que juega con esa curiosidad que sabe que ha despertado en el espectador sobre la historia de los curas. Así, sacia esta hambre de saber solo por un tiempo concreto sin ahondar más en el pasado, pero dejando un sabor tan concentrado que el resto de la película sabe diferente. Para describirlo un poco más, este sabor concentrado tiene un tinte kantiano a propósito de la razón pública y privada. Lo que en palabras más sencillas, no es más que un contraste entre las normas sagradas de la iglesia frente a temas políticos y sociales, y la razón privada que posee cada uno frente a estos mismos temas.

Como consecuencia de lo anterior, la película no deja ningun sentimiento de compasión, ya que no estamos viendo la historia desde el lado de los héroes. Por el contrario, estos villanos cargan con 3 capas de oscuridad: las normas eclesiásitcas, las perspectivas identitarias sobre estas normas y, adicionalmente, esa rabia contenida de haber sido castigados por la iglesia. Y entonces vemos a hombres que matan y quieren ver morir, hombres que por fracciones de segundos olvidan que son pecadores y cargan un letrero que los vuelve aún más perversos que toda la humanidad pecadora.

De esta manera, el aspecto del castigo y la penitencia se vuelve el giro de tuerca que hace la película tan fascinante, ya que nuevamente retoma la idea del club como círculo no solo cerrado sino repetitivo y sin salida. Sin importar que tanto se intenté huir de esa condición pecadora, el sistema siempre los llevará a esa cárcel amarilla que bajo una falsa sensación de familiaridad hace más larga y tortuosa la penitencia.

Finalmente, el director incluye un elemento adicional que en lugar de accesorio se ubica en el centro de la trama: la Madre Mónica. Esa líder de la manada de los dejados de lado que puede transformarse quitandose el hábito para llevar a su galgo a las carreras y alimentar la falsa familiaridad, es también quien vuelve a trenzar su cabello para tomar la decisión de acabar con la vida de uno para salvar la de todos. Es una líder diferente que se enmascara como vigilante, porque en realidad no está arriesgando nada. Particularmente es un papel de mujer de iglesia que sin embargo no padece los riesgos de la vulnerabilidad de su condición. Tampoco es particularmente un femme fatale, pero sí es el motivo de que el resto de su manada cometan más pecados. Es quien motiva a todos a untar sus manos, porque ella es inmune a ser castigada.

Posdata: El conde, la cinta ganadora en el Festival de cine de Venecia está en netflix y guarda bellas coincidencias con El Club.

#cine #critic #film #cinephile #critica #pablo larrain #el club #chile #cine chileno #2015

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sinceileftyoublog · 1 year

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The Rural Alberta Advantage Interview: The Ultimate Arbiters

Photo by Leroy Schultz

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Like all bands still dealing with the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, The Rural Alberta Advantage had to adapt. Due to the worldwide pause on live music, they were unable to follow 2017′s excellent The Wild the way they knew best: writing, workshopping, playing live, then finalizing. Fast-forward, and they surprise released an EP, The Rise (Saddle Creek), last spring, announcing the return of founding keyboardist Amy Cole, their first music in five years because they could simply no longer wait. They survived by remotely sharing demos, ignoring the typical album release cycle, releasing this batch of songs soon after they were finalized. Ready to tour and then play some more unreleased material, the band launched on a U.S. tour, their first since the pandemic, in May 2022. By the third show, lead vocalist and guitarist Nils Edenloff, followed by the rest of the band, tested positive for COVID. As many bands two years in had the pandemic in their rearview mirror, The Rural Alberta Advantage were left wondering when it would seem a bit more normal.

Thankfully, the band was able to play a handful of shows in Canada during the latter half of 2022, finally bringing The Rise to the stage and even--yes--debuting an unreleased song. That tune, “Plague Dogs”, was released as a standalone single last month with the announcement of what will (hopefully) be their first full U.S. tour post-COVID. (No, “Plague Dogs” is not a pandemic reference; it was inspired by the Richard Adams novel of the same name.) Though The Rural Alberta Advantage are planning to release a full-length later this year, “a culmination of everything we’ve been working on this whole time,” as Cole told me over Zoom earlier this month, they aren’t taking their time for granted. Instead, they want to put as many songs out into the world as they can and play for as many people as possible. Their tour starts tomorrow night at Lincoln Hall in Chicago.

Read my interview with Cole below, edited for length and clarity, about “Plague Dogs”, The Rise, and the history of the band.

Since I Left You: It seemed fitting to me that the debut of “Plague Dogs” coincided with the announcement of these tour dates, because the video shows live footage and the song has such a live sound. Was that something the you purposefully did?

Amy Cole: Yeah, it was. It sort of always is. It wasn’t because of the live video that we wanted to make the song sound more live. We’re always trying to capture what we sound like live. We’ve had varying degrees of success over the years [doing it], but it’s always our goal, because we consider ourselves a live band. I’m going to rehearsals right after this, and it’s when the three of us are in a room together that we feel the best. With Gavin Gardiner, who has been a friend for many years and has been the one recording and producing these last few songs with us, we’re able to get that [live feel.]

SILY: It definitely has a loud-quiet-loud dynamic going on. Was that also something the band went into recording trying to do?

AC: A lot of our songs do that. [laughs] We weren’t trying to rip ourselves off, but we love playing with dynamics in our songs. Whenever we can try to do it in an inventive way we don’t feel like we’ve done before, we do. This time, there are all these ups and downs and dropouts, and we really leaned into that aspect of the song. We go by feel: we work songs to death until we all feel really great about them. We’re really happy with how “Plague Dogs” turned out.

SILY: I’ve never seen you live before. Do your songs tend to take on new life live, arrangement-wise or in any other way?

AC: Yes, 1000 percent. That’s what was so challenging about The Rise. It was the first time we weren’t able to do what we normally do, which is start a song, get it to a place where we feel like we can try it out live, and then go on tour and road test that song, see what’s working and what isn’t, so by the time we get into the studio, we’ve played it live for a bunch of people and feel like we’ve got it to a really good place [to record]. Because of the pandemic, we weren’t able to do that with the songs on The Rise. That was really challenging for us. We were going in a lot more blind than normally. “Plague Dogs” we were able to play live quite a few times for people during the shows we did back in the fall. When we were recording, we felt really good about where we were at with it; we were feeling really encouraged by its response at our shows. When we went in to record it with Gavin, we knew what parts needed to be bigger, what parts needed to be smaller. That bridge in the middle didn’t come up until our last mixing session, where we thought, “Let’s amp the bass up four times as much as it is compared to the rest of the song, and let’s lean into the organ.”

SILY: Was there a different way you went about getting the feedback you needed for The Rise?

AC: Not really. Each of us played demos for close, trusted friends and loved ones. Sometimes, you’ll get a good, honest response, but sometimes they’re gonna be nice. What’s lucky with the three of us is we really trust each other’s taste. Even if it was just one of us not feeling it, we’ll listen and keep going and hacking away until the three of us are good with it. The ultimate arbiter is the three of us, so we really had to rely on that because we didn’t have a live audience telling us something was good or okay or not great. Luckily, we feel like it worked out for The Rise, but we’re happy our new songs we’re recording, we’re playing live, listening for feedback and seeing what’s hitting.

SILY: “Plague Dogs”’ launching point was the Richard Adams novel of the same name. Do you find that films or books are often the origins for your songs?

AC: I’m speaking for Nils, but sometimes he gets the idea for songs from TV or films or art. A lot of Hometowns and our first couple records was inspired by real stories from Nils’ personal life, as tons of songwriters do. A lot of those songs were about people and places he was thinking about from back home. That’s where he drew a lot of inspiration in the early days. If he were the one answering, he’d say inspiration comes from a lot of places for him. Plague Dogs happened to be the inspiration for this song, which made a lot of people [incorrectly] think it was inspired by the pandemic. [laughs]

SILY: How do you think the band has grown over time, instrumentally, lyrically, or in general?

AC: We’ve grown in the ways that people do over the 15, close to 20 years we’ve been a band. We’ve definitely gotten a lot better musically. We’ve learned a lot about making music, writing songs. We all know each other a lot better. We’ve been through a lot together, and we know how to collaborate. We know how to listen to each other and present our ideas to each other. Anyone who has worked in a group would understand this, but people have really different styles of working and communicating, and it takes a long time to learn how to best work with another person. We’ve gotten to a place where we’re super comfortable with each other and get each other, and now we sound tighter.

SILY: What else are you specifically looking forward to on this tour besides road testing new material?

AC: I’m sure it’s the answer every band gives: getting to play in front of people after not being able to do so after a number of years. We never took it lightly, but we’ll never take it for granted again. To be on stage and get to be the ones performing is one of the best experiences you can have as a musician, playing your songs in front of people who want to hear them. The fact that we’re going to get to do that again is an incredible gift. We weren’t sure we’d ever get to do this again. There were long stretches where we didn’t know what the future held for us, but we’re so happy it’s this.

SILY: Is there anything you’ve been listening to, watching, or reading lately you’ve enjoyed?

AC: I watched a bit of Wednesday. My friend edited the show, including the iconic dance sequence that went viral recently, so I was very excited for him. I watched Fleishman Is in Trouble. I love The Amber Ruffin Show, which I hope comes back. She’s a writer for Late Night with Seth Meyers, which I also watch all the time. I just watched “Seth and Lizzo Go Daydrinking” last night. I loved it. It was so hilarious. Lizzo’s amazing. I was happy she won Record of the Year.

I was listening to Television just before we got on. I’ve been listening to them a lot the last couple days.

SILY: Mourning Tom Verlaine?

AC: Yeah. Listening to how much of the seeds of so many bands are in them.

02/23 – Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall

02/24 – Milwaukee, WI @ Shank Hall

02/25 – Minneapolis, MN @ Fine Line Music Café

02/26 – Omaha, NE @ Slowdown

02/28 – Denver, CO @ Hi-Dive

03/02 – Kansas City, MO @ recordBar

03/03 – St. Louis, MO @ Old Rock House

03/04 – Indianapolis, IN @ Hi-Fi

03/22 – Boston, MA @ Brighton Music Hall

03/23 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom

03/24 – Woodstock, NY @ Levon Helm Studios

03/25 – Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s

03/27 – Washington DC @ Songbyrd

03/28 – Richmond, VA @ Richmond Music Hall

03/29 – Durham, NC @ Motorco Music Hall

03/31 – Cleveland, OH @ Beachland Ballroom

04/01 – Detroit, MI @ El Club

04/02 – London, ON @ Rum Runners

06/16 – Beaumont, AB @ Beaumont Blues & Roots

07/06 – Calgary, AB @ Wildhorse Saloon Stampede Party

07/07 – Orillia, ON @ Tudhope Park

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sunlaire · 1 year

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Jonàs and Ana Pau finally ****** *****

#el club #this show has me in its web #its sexy sexy web #i hate it but i love it but i hate

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kennahjune · 4 months

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No Upside Down steddie AU where Steve gradually meets the members of Hellfire (-Eddie) in and out of school and they all come to befriending him really fast because “Steve Harrington is actually a good dude”

But Eddie fucking hates it.

And this only spurs Hellfire on because they think him getting mad over Steve Harrington is fucking hilarious.

Jeff who takes a foods class in third period and Steve does to and then the teacher pairs them for a baking project and Jeff gets to go to Casa Harrington. And he realizes rather quickly that Steve really likes baking and cooking and actually knows what he’s doing and that he’s not just taking the class for an easy A.

Brian (I’ve named him Brian, yes), meets Steve in Art class. Like Jeff, he thought Steve was taking it for an easy A but when seats are changed and they sit together he realizes that, no, Steve’s actually kind of good at drawing (particularly scenery). They get to talking about one of Steve’s sketches and the rest is history.

Gareth doesn’t officially meet Steve until later, but he does see him out with the kids at the arcade. Gareth works at the arcade and there’s this particular group of kids that just irks him— turns out they’re Steve’s gaggle. He watches in begrudging amusement while Steve rounds them up like a pro.

Then Gareth officially meets him after Hellfire one day. It’s fucking windy and he’s just leaving to school to go home when the papers and sheets he was holding are fucking torn from his hands. Steve grabs the papers— there after some kind of sports practice— and makes sure Gareth has them secured in his bad before leaving with a dorky finger-waggle wave.

And Eddie just downright refuses.

And then the school year ends and Steve graduates. And he’s convinced he doesn’t have to see Steve again.

Until, of course, Mike Dustin and Lucas join.

Jeff, Gareth, and Brian are all ecstatic to share their own run-ins of Steve Harrington to the three boys who so clearly idolize him. Gareth happily recalls how Steve “tamed” them in the arcade every time he came in.

Eddie sits in brooding silence.

And then Lucas joins the basketball team. And sure— Jeff’s on the volleyball team— but basketball jocks are so much worse than volleyball jocks.

Mike and Dustin, however thrown out of orbit they were at first, seem to settle in eventually and learn to plan around it. They think that anything that makes Lucas happy is a good thing (even if it did take a bit of a talk with Will for them to realize).

But Eddie? Eddie can’t stand it.

Which is why he refuses to move the date for the final campaign.

But Eddie doesn’t even get to introduce Vecna before Steve Harrington himself is all but breaking down the fucking door.

Eddie has this whole argument in his head that quickly dwindles when he sees the pure anger in Steve’s eyes (and also because Steve is really fucking pretty holy shit).

Steve tells Dustin Mike and Erica to pack up and get to the game before he drags them and you know what?

They listen.

Including hard ass Erica Sinclair.

And then idk Steve and Eddie get into a whole fight about.

But Steve makes it very clear that he doesn’t appreciate Eddie making Lucas feel like he can’t be happy doing DnD and basketball because that poor boy deserves nice things dammit.

And Eddie sleeps on it over the weekend before hunting Lucas down first thing Monday morning to apologize.

Lucas forgive Eddie (against Eddie’s protest because let the man grovel) but makes Eddie also apologize to Steve.

Which Eddie does by showing up to the Harrington Estate.

Eddie apologizes and they get high together and the rest is history.

I might actually make this into something, it’s already pretty fleshed out but eh