Following the death of Gary Brooker at the age of 74 last week, I feel compelled to pay tribute to his finest song, or perhaps his second finest song. Obituaries have been full of praise for the songwriter and lead vocalist of Procol Harum, concentrating on his first celebrated hit single A Whiter Shade Of Pale which reached Number One in the UK singles charts in the Summer of Love, July 1967. This piece shines a spotlight on a lesser -known song which is nonetheless full of power and emotion.
The footage is beautifully relentless, streams of people in different cities leaving work and school, streams of people smiling at the camera. You wonder about all the thoughts in their head. The fears and loves and worries. You wonder about their lives before and after this moment.
In his introduction, Truffaut warns, “No one should expect me to introduce this book with caution, detachment, or equanimity. André Bazin and Jean Renoir have meant too much to me for me to be able to speak of them dispassionately.”
In English “Ikiru” means “to live,” and for the rest of the film Watanbe examines what it means to be alive, what it means to be human, and what makes being alive valuable to him.
This is a painfully relevant film, and everyone should watch it.
In our last issue we posted a tribute to artist Harry Sternberg, by Marc Reed. In the essay, Reed wrote, “Seventy years after Sternberg marveled at the industrial might of Bethlehem Steel, I was there marveling at its decay.” Sternberg also chronicled the power of “King Coal,” and Reed visited coal country decades later to record the depths of the industry’s decline. The result is a moving examination of the history of coal and of the lives of coal miners–promise and power turned to decay, captured in this short film.
We’re all gleaners, finding beauty and meaning and sustenance in the unlikely, the odd, the overlooked. We’re all magpies, lining our nests with beauty where we find it.
Both films are about excess and waste, beauty and love. They are about the strength and fragility of people – in body and spirit.
“I think I then immediately boxed my heart away and tightened the great padlock over my chest so that I couldn’t feel anything that would undermine or dissolve me…”
The heart of the film is the unlikely friendship between Bruno and Roberto.
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