The Secret World of Arrietty

The Secret World of Arrietty is the new (well, new to the US) anime film by legendary Japanese anime makers Studio Ghibli.  Released in the US by Disney and dubbed with voices from a comedian couple, one iconic comedian, and actors from Disney's television franchises, the film is a charming, lovely meditation on adversity. 

Hayao Miyazaki, the leading filmmaker from Ghibli, (known for such classics as Kiki's Delivery Service, Spirited Away, and Howl's Moving Castle) conceived and wrote the screenplay for the film, but didn't direct it.  Instead, he hands the directorial reins to animator Hiromasa Yonebayashi, who concentrates the film in the quiet moments, the moments of wonder, which in a way - replace the moments of magic, which are typical of Miyazaki's landscape. 

Based on Mary Norton's classic children's book, The Borrowers, Arrietty is the story of a young borrower (a little person who lives deep inside an average human's home, or "bean" as the borrowers call them) who is accidentally seen by young man visiting the house she lives beneath, due to a poor heart condition.  This causes a series of problems for the young heroine and her mother and father.  But the events teach Arrietty how to be brave and do the right thing, although everyone tells her it's the wrong thing (to trust humans).  And it teaches the boy (named Shawn in the American dub) to not give up the fight for his life as well. 

Despite this simple storyline, the film draws you into a world that is both mundane, yet as gorgeous and wondrous as any previous Ghibli release.  The tiny details from the stamps as art in the borrowers' home, to the country landscape outside the house, to the ticks and quirks of the house cat, who faces off with Arrietty, but eventually warms up to her, are what make the film so captivating to witness and enjoy.  But what is most wonderful about this lovely picture, is its focus on what it's doing.  It's telling a story.  There is no flash, or 3D, or heart stopping chase scenes.  It's a quiet, beautiful, funny, and endearing family film.

The Murder of Alexandria, Draft 1 done

Stillwater, Minnesota, ca. 1925

I've come to the end, or the beginning of the end, of a long journey. This weekend I finished the Minnesota play I've been working on, on and off, since 2008.  The Murder of Alexandria is done.  For now.  There is still much work to be done.


A history:
Sometime in 2008, I started reading Agatha Christie novels in research for what was to become my period "mystery" play.  I must of read half a dozen of more books of the famed mystery writer.  Although some were better than others, and eventually I was worn out with the formulaic quality of the genre, there was one novel that stood out to me, mainly due to its surprising ending.  The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was the one novel of Christie's where I was truly surprised by the resolution and identity of the murderer.  (The only other that came close was Crooked House.)  So I decided to take inspiration from the novel.  It has a very similar skeleton, but I decided to set the play in Minnesota.  I wanted the same year the novel was published, 1926 (which was also the year Christie disappeared).  I had originally set it in a unspecified small town in Northern Minnesota, but eventually came upon Stillwater.  My sister and her husband live in Stillwater, so I've had occasion to visit.  It being one of, if not the oldest towns in the state, gives it such a depth of history.  I love the idea of the river, rather than a lake.  Also it was big enough to handle more than one denominational church, but still small enough to be considered a town, not a city.  There is a character and charm to the place, that gives it an almost surreal quality, as if the past never left the place, and is still alive and well. 


Mystery:
The idea for the plot of the mystery was derived from Christie's Ackroyd, but it was the ending that I wanted to twist even further.  Apparently a French author/literature professor had devised that the killer was someone else at the end of Ackroyd, and that Christie had psychologically known all along.  I took that idea and ran with it.  From the very outset I knew who did it and why.  I had never planned anything so carefully. Going back and filling holes.  Reading and rereading scenes to make sure the information matched up correctly and chronologically.   It's fun to write a mystery, but you have to keep everything in check.


Scandinavian Mythology: 
I grew up in Minnesota, born and raised.  I'm half Scandinavian (Norwegian and Swedish, my father's side) and half British (my mother's side).  I've been fascinated with England for years, but I honestly don't know that much about Scandinavian history (despite the fact that I live in Ballard of all the places in Seattle, very near the Nordic Heritage Museum!).  Further inspired by another novelist's innovative inventions (Neil Gaiman's American Gods), I wondered what it would be like for the mystery to involve some kind of supernatural element - so it becomes Agatha Christie meets Twin Peaks, but maybe not so overt.  So I began to research Scandinavian folklore and legend.  The myths and stories that come from Scandinavia, are not as similar to other European tales (a la "fairy" tales).  Their myths are very often allegory and concerned with lessons or histories; legends versus the idea of "story".  Such as Paul Bunyan is a more modern legend, with its own ties to Minnesota.  Featured in the play is a Draugr, a ghost or dead thing that has been drowned and lost, and returned to find someone to collect his body so that he may be at rest.  There are various versions of the Draugr, but I liked this idea the best as it suited my purposes.  He's not an evil or vile spirit as many stories may portray him.  He's looking for closure, and I think that is truly the root of any good ghost story.  A Huldra is another creature in the play.  She is an enchantress or siren, who lures men into her realm.  I also played around with her mythology to suit my story, but she does have the typical hollowed out back and fox's tail (in some regions, she has a cow's tail, but I didn't think was as sexy). 


A conclusion:
The preliminary worked is wrapped up; the first draft.  I'm going to do more research on Stillwater, perhaps more on Scandinavia as well.  Period trappings will be important too, to flesh everything out.  I've researched bootlegging and slang of the era, but there could be even more details.  The plot needs to be finely tuned, although I think I'm fairly happy with the characterizations.  It's been one of the most truly rewarding experiences to write, nay - finish something I've had in my head for so many years.  It's been a long journey, one I hope will one day find its way to the stage.

Profanity in Art (Something I wrote in college)

I was searching for something in a drawer at home, when I stumbled upon a bunch of stuff I wrote in college.  Some of it I remember very well...others, well...I don't recall that well at all.  Some of it was really quite awful.  I can't believe I truly thought it was good back then.  Some of the stuff that others (other student writers, professors, etc.) thought was good, I didn't think was good anymore.  And probably didn't at that time.  It's usually the stuff that never found an opinion.  Stuff I thought wasn't great, others didn't know what to make of one way or the other - stuff like that is the kind of stuff I look at now and think of as a kind of diamond in the rough.  Such as the piece below.  I don't recall when I wrote it or where it came from.  But it struck me as interesting; personal, when reflective of someone I knew then and don't anymore.  It also struck me as a harsh criticism of the person...but also somehow redemptive.  And what a sadness.  I remember those rooms.  I remember those people.  It all seems distant memory though.  And how confused I thought I was.

Profanity in Art
by Dustin Engstrom
Written circa 2001

He stood in the doorway of my neighbor's apartment; a giant with a red beard and Santa belly, roaring at my comments as if I was an elf who broke a toy.  He chewed the glass of his bottle, quaking like a vulture, shooting nasty looks at the girls and boys smoking dope, reading Kerouac, doing nothing, wearing tattered clothes, tattoos of angels, piercing noses and drinking doses of liquor beyond good measure, throwing up their souls in the toilet of his girlfriend who smiled as if she were the host of the President's Ball, touring the rooms of the cave-like residence with a sweeping peacock beauty and restraint.

He told me there was no need for profanity in art.  "Fuck, it's ridiculous," he said and lit a cigarette, blowing smoke through his overgrown lips and hair that covered them.  He wasn't in the mood to discuss anything of importance for everyone thinks they are an intellectual these days.  Nothing is important anymore.  All he cared about was music and fucking.  Swarming through his words, expressing tenderness in love and slapping his girlfriend on the ass like a hick in a hick bar who only drinks Moose Drool and wears flannels and combat boots, listening to Hank Williams and picking fights with the good looking guy who beat him at pool.

He stood there, alone, sovereign.  Almost touching the ceiling and laughing like a parrot whose throat is sore from constantly squawking at his shadow. 

I left the room for my own, wanting to masturbate, wanting to get drunk, wanting to fly, wanting to find a girl, a boy, a person, a waking memory, a dream, a spitting image of my youth, wanting to leave, wanting to listen to Ryan Adams and cry, wanting to hold myself in darkness only to find I'm not alone and no one but my shadows leave me.  Wanting to know if he felt the same way sometimes.  He seemed to be sadder than anyone I had ever known.  Or maybe he was right; there's no need for profanity in art.  Only pretty words make people wish they'd felt happy.

Like a Pink Parade

She wore a pink dress.  It swam as she moved.

He asked her for her name.  She replied that she didn’t know.

She broke into song.  “I love the sky!  I love the blue!”

He ran his fingers along his eyebrows, as if to smooth them.  “Um…” was all he could think to say.

She skipped and danced and fell on the ground.

“Oh…um…”

She eased herself up onto her elbows.  She sighed like a tiger after feeding.

He asked her if she was all right.  She replied that she didn’t know.

She pretended to be at the bottom of the ocean.  Arms and legs out…swim, swim.  Swish, swish.

He thought she looked like she couldn’t breathe.  He fell to his knees.

She looked up.  Still holding her breath, she went red for a long minute, and then exhaled.

“I thought you might be drowning.”

“Oh,” she replied.  “No.  I can hold my breath under water for a long time.”

“I like your eyes.  Can you see under water too?”

“Of course!”

He asked her for her name.  She replied that she didn’t know, and then coughed like a seasick monkey.

She smiled at him after a while.  He didn’t move.

He asked her for her hand.  She gave it to him with glee.

They ate toast with jam and drank tea in the tree of forgetfulness for almost two hours before they fell into an oblivious volcano, which then exploded and they flew into the sky, into the blue.

They swam as they moved.  Like a pink parade. 

The Letter

A fragment:  The Letter

Dustin Engstrom

January, 2012

I sat alone in a vacant room.  That must sound redundant.  But there was nothing, not even a chair.  One window looked down into the street.  A rather nothing street, really.  Nothing special about it in one way or another.  I saw a dog at one point; make his hound like way down the wet street, wagging his tail in an unseen anticipation of something.  But other than that, the room was silent.  Almost deafening.  I sighed, took a pen from my pocket, and paper, and wrote the following:

“I am not going to see you today.  I cannot.  Will not.  I am here, where I am, and that is all.  Goodbye.  Do not try to find me.”

I thought about how to sign my name.  But then thought better of it.  She would know well enough who I am and what I mean.  I folded the sheet together in my hand, and opened the latch on the window.  Pushing it open, I could feel the freshness of the air, smell the scents of the city, and hear the noises too, like bleats and stops.  Taking a deep breath, I tossed the singled, folded sheet into the sky and let it drift and drift, until it reached the street, sliding lightly into the corner of a building.  I worried it might get muddy, but that was only for a moment.  Because not a moment later, she was there.  Standing there, as if transported.  Her eyes were wide as she looked around and down the street, trying to realize where she was and why she was there.  She then looked down, and my heart jumped.  I felt like leaping out the window, like some insane flying frog and snatching the letter with my tongue, before she had a chance to see it, or me, as I then bounced away into the fog.  But I caught myself on the ledge of the window, and even shrank back a little at the thought, and at the sight of her looking down, and then bending down to pick up my folded note.  Did she know it was for her?

She opened the sheet, read it through, and then lowered it in her hand.  The wind picked up, and it flittered in the wind as she clutched it tightly.  Her face was expressionless.  I could not see or sense anything about her that was sadness, or fear, or desire…or anything I could accumulate into some emotion that drove her forward.  As she stepped into the street, I shrank back even further into the dark room.  She wouldn’t see me up here.  And even if she did, she wouldn’t be able to make out my face in the shadows.

A car came wheeling into view.  She did not move.  She just stood there, as if rooted.  She just stood there as it quickly rushed into her.  She fell, as did my letter.  The force must have released it from her grip.  It zipped up into the sky like a twittering humming bird.  It wielded up and up and finally in through my window, bloody and torn.  I snatched it with one hand, and shut the window as the sound of the car’s engine turned off, and it was silent again. 

Two films that speak to cinematic history

Wyman and Dietrich

Ten years after Hitchcock's masterwork, Rebecca was released, Stage Fright, staring Jane Wyman and Marlene Dietrich came to the cinema.  Considered one of his lesser films, there is something about the movie's set up that still keeps a particular interest going.  Similar to me, as Strangers on a Train, which I had never considered to be that interesting of a film, Stage Fright, sets up its murder plot with a flash back of one person's view of events.  From there on out, Wyman's character (an aspiring actress named Eve) takes it upon herself to get to the heart of the situation by going uncover, and putting to use her skills to make it happen.  The two stars are the center of the piece (and the only two non-British actors in a film set in London).  Wyman's character supposedly studied in the US, which "may" account for her American accent.  And Dietrich being German, well it doesn't really matter.  Stage Fright was toward the end of her film career (although she would go on to do films for about another ten years).  It's an interesting point of history for Wyman too.  Fresh off a divorce from Ronald Regan, Wyman's film career didn't last a whole lot longer either (again, about ten years).  Hitchcock however, would go on to make his most famous films in the next ten years following Stage Fright, starting with Strangers on a Train in 1951. 

Chloe Grace Moretz and Asa Butterfield

A new film, by Martin Scorsese, called Hugo, based on Brian Selznick's novel, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, is also an interesting point of history that speaks to a particular point of history in cinema.  Deemed as a fantasy adventure, the film follows a young orphan named Hugo Cabret (played with natural doe-eyed wonder and melancholy by Asa Butterfield) who, after his clockmaker father dies, is set to work for his uncle winding the towering clocks in a Parisian railway station in the 1930's.  His father's last project was to fix a broken automaton (a kind of wind-up machine or mechanical man).  Now that his uncle has disappeared and left to his own devices, Hugo has made his life's purpose to finish the project so sets out by stealing little wind-up parts from the railway's toy store run by Georges (played brilliantly by Ben Kingsley).  Georges' goddaughter (Chloe Grace Moretz) helps connect the dots between the two and the journey from being an orphan to finding a loving family, and being a broken man without purpose, to being reinvigorated with purpose is the arch of the film's premise.  But more so (as in the book) is a loving tribute to early French filmmaker, Georges Melies, best known for A Trip to the Moon (1902), of which becomes a particular plot axis, which Hugo revolves around.  The rest of the supporting cast makes nice work of their parts, especially a funny and well-timed Sacha Baron Cohen as the railway inspector.  It's a well done, beautifully looking movie about movies and love of movies, but mostly about a love for what you do - finding a home for your passion and a home for yourself, to be with loved ones (as many of the supporting characters are courting one another) and not being afraid to be who and what you are, despite the challenges life may throw at you.  Scorsese has made a film with a sentiment that only borders on a sweet sentimentality, probably because the source material has a profound, yet simple magic to it (also a point of fact, Selznick is related to that famous of famous film producers).  But its the style and grace of every participant that will give it a kind of long-viewed luster to last many years to come.

Melancholia

Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg, as Justine and Claire, the characters of focus in one of the few happy moments in Lars von Trier's epic new film

Danish film director Lars von Trier's films are often about female protagonists dealing with some kind of overwrought situation.  Dogville, for example, is one of my favorite films of all time.  His new film, Melancholia, is clearly no different, yet the film has a slower, creeping way of getting to the heart of its subject matter.  It is a densely layered and beautiful motion picture, but not without its flaws - which one could forgive, because its an "art film" or you could analyze to death, and still not come up with the appropriate reaction of how you truly feel overall after viewing this monumentally bizarre creation.

It starts out brilliantly - with beautiful shots of space and slow motion motifs, which will only have resonance after seeing the film in its entirety, but they do register as you go along.  A rogue planet is heading to earth (already one of my areas of concern, as the science surrounding this impending collision and its aftermath makes little common sense to me) and there is some debate on whether of not it will simply "fly by" Earth, or directly hit it, thus marking the end of the world.  The planet's name shares that of the title of the film. After about five minutes of the most visually stunning moments, the film proceeds with part one which centers around the wedding of Justine, played by Kirsten Dunst (who won best actress at Cannes for her performance).  Her sister and brother-in-law live in this castle (where on Earth this place is never revealed) and are hosting the all night reception.  It is discovered as the night plays out that this is a family of dysfunction (including mom and dad, played by John Hurt and Charlotte Rampling).  Justine is plagued with some kind deep rooted depression, which it seems she hoped to overcome by getting married.  But nothing goes right; she's continually distracted and she keeps leaving moments that should be meaningful, for moments that are fleeting.  By the end of the night she's made almost everyone upset with her, including her husband (Alexander Skarsgard), who decides this whole marriage isn't going to work and leaves when other guests do as well.  Part two then focuses on Claire, Justine's sister (played with rich believability by Charlotte Gainsboug).  Some time has gone by since the wedding and Justine is coming to stay with her, her husband (Kiefer Sutherland) and their young son who dotes on Justine.  But Justine is now in the depths of her depression and can barely move and only wants sleep.  Claire seems to be the caregiver of everyone and just wants peace and tranquility and for things to be "nice".  But then the whole planet thing comes back into focus and you find out that Claire is incredibly paranoid that the planet is going to hit earth.  As the planet gets closer, Claire's paranoia gets deeper and Justine's depression gets better. 

To reveal any further about the plot wouldn't be fair to those who actually might want to see this experiment in patience.  And it is at that point where I left the exposition of plot where things start to get a little wonky.  There is no doubt that this is a beautiful looking film.  The emotions though, I always felt distant from them.  There is a scene where someone dies and the response to that bordered on ridiculous just for the sake of being bizarre.  But I suppose this is really the crux of the film's dilemma and its sentiment.  Melancholia is about just that, the human condition's darkest places of the mind.  How do we deal with it, how do others react to it, etc.?  There is also a keen sense of "place" in the film's many metaphors.  Once things become impossible on estate, they can't leave it, just like they can't leave the planet - we're alone in the universe and so we'll die alone, there is no where to run to.  Claire's response to the actual possibility of the end of the world is, "then where will be son grow up?". 

It is difficult to pull back the dense layers, when you don't have a full investment in the characters.  I certainly felt the panic of the situation and thought, "gosh, what would I do".  But there were also things that just didn't make consistent sense, such as the planet, or the array of accents going on within a single family and household.  Some situations during the wedding were masterful, including comic moments by Udo Kier as the wedding planner.  There is a kind of magic realism, I think- to von Trier's tale, and that might be what makes it so exasperating to sit through.  You either go with it, or you don't.  There is this planet coming to destroy Earth, but we are focused on one small family's problems with depression and their reactions to it.  People that might not be so "sane" are able to be calm and be equipped to handle such a situation, but those of us who live "healthy" lives will panic and cry for our lives and our loved ones.  Yet when it comes down to it, it seems the film only has this to say and therefore has a trite sensibility, rather than the possibility for examining this with a deeper sense of purpose and evaluation.  So it is up the audience to put the pieces together, to scrutinize these disjointed moments in Justine and Claire's lives before they may end up ash in the wind of space.