How often have you heard a “period piece” praised for its obsessive detail and ability to “capture” the essence of the era it depicts? Probably more often than Kiera Knightley and Helen Mirren have visited the old-school wardrobe warehouse combined.

Now, how many times have you walked out of a theater and been struck that the movie you just saw totally captured what it meant to be alive in the world at that very second?

Not everyday. Not even every year, as far as I am concerned. More often than not, topical films either miss the window of opportunity (see: W.) or require several years removal from their chosen subject before hindsight can really be 20/20 (see: every other film by Oliver Stone).

In somewhat of a lackluster year for “prestige pictures,” two films stand out for their uncanny reflection and dissection of American life in 2009.

“I am the best film director in the world,” Lars Von Trier told reporters at the Cannes Film Festival, “all the others are overrated” (Hernandez).  The Danish director, long infamous in international cinema for his bravado and courtship of controversy, provided these remarks in defense against the critical firestorm launched over the premier of his latest film, Antichrist (2009).  Despite its title, the film has drawn unique ire not for blasphemous content (at least in a Christian sense), but for several instances of shocking violence and perceived undertones of misogyny.  The Cannes jury awarded Von Trier a special prize for his work, an “Anti-award” for misogyny, and against such charges the director says simply “I can’t justify myself,” neither confirming nor denying the claims while clarifying his intention to do no such thing (Hernandez).  Many artists have claimed that explaining the meaning of their work detracts from the art, but Von Trier’s film is one of few works to stir an audience so much as to demand in rage an explanation.  Does the violent response to Antichrist indicate a meanness or evilness inherent in the film, or is it simply indicative of the work’s rare cinematic power? While Antichrist contains elements that can be construed as misogynistic, the film does not condone such beliefs and should be respected as an individual’s artistic expression.

“But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.” – Raymond Chandler, “The Simple Art of Murder” (1944)

“Excuse me, I don’t see any Courry Brand cat food here.”– Phillip Marlowe, The Long Goodbye (1973)

“At this point in my life, I just really feel like I could destroy some mother fuckers.”- Ronnie Barnhardt, Observe and Report (2009).

Raymond Chandler opens his 1944 essay “The Simple Art of Murder” with a claim: “Fiction in any form has always intended to be realistic.”  In this spirit, Chandler goes on to systematically demolish the formula and conventions of the detective story up to this point, directing specific ire at the dominant English school of whodunits for their obsession with plot contrivance and negligence for the truth of real life.  Chandler praises a group of authors led by Dashiell Hammet, who “gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse,”

The value of the motion picture camera, as argued by the critic Andre Malraux, is that it makes possible the “furthermost evolution to date of plastic realism”.   Cinema and its nephew television, then, have long been considered the art forms most capable of capturing and duplicating life in its most realistic form.  Critics and audiences praise films and television programs for their efforts at “realism,” but how often do the subjects of this praise actually resemble reality?   Most TV shows touted as “the most realistic ever” seem to take the medium’s well-worn formulas and inject tired story outlines with a few extra doses of violence and sex per episode in hopes of holding viewers over past the next commercial break.  This stagnant bog of superficial development encompasses the bulk of today’s television landscape, where each week brings a new, more “realistic” take on a murder investigation that culminates in ludicrous stylization and cheesy one-liners.  Art directors drip blood and spongy brain pieces on stages until forcing the viewer to conclude that, yes, the corpse of an abused woman who has had her head blown off before being horribly burned and regurgitated by an alligator would probably look just like that in real life. 

My father passed away 186 hours ago.  162 hours ago I stood in front of the bench where he set his final cigar, on the cold cement floor where he lay down for the last time to cool his tired bones.  Rowdy the Doberman, the only earthly witness, saw from his nearby cage what in the days that followed seemed more and more like an act of divine sympathy and humor.

On October 4^th, 2009, my father finished mowing his lawn and lit a stogie in his sitting room before suffering a circulatory failure that gently closed his time with us on earth.  A poetic coda for a man who took pleasure in few things more than those that punctuated his life.  He loved to cut grass, loved cigars, loved to stretch out his overheated limbs on the cold ground as he caught his breath.  And then it was over, cell phone untouched in his pocket and no signs of pain.  Just shy of 62, that final Sunday moment came much too soon, but could not have come much more perfectly.

The events in the days that followed certainly would have given him a heart attack.  On Thursday, his Missouri Football Tigers blew a 12-point lead in the second half against hated Nebraska.  On Saturday, the St. Louis Cardinals ended their thunderous season with an embarrassing whimper of a 3 game sweep to the LA Dodgers.  On the Friday in between, Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace prize.  With his children thriving and his work a success, a man like him needed things to be angry about, and no conceivable sequence of events could have possibly turned his face more red.  All of it’s now a punch line to a dark joke his ghost won’t ever stop laughing at.

The day before my father’s mother died, she told someone nearby of her dream the night before.  She dreamed that she was sitting on the porch in Memphis where she grew up, and saw her Grandmother walking slowly down the old street towards her.

On October 4^th, 2009, my father told my mother on the phone about his dreams.  They were strange dreams, he thought they meant something.  He saw his own mother and father in the places of his past.

Then he cut the grass and lit a cigar.

Loretta Bell: How’d you sleep?
Ed Tom Bell: I don’t know. Had dreams.
Loretta Bell: Well you got time for ‘em now. Anythin’ interesting?
Ed Tom Bell: They always is to the party concerned.
Loretta Bell: Ed Tom, I’ll be polite.
Ed Tom Bell: Alright then. Two of ‘em. Both had my father in ‘em . It’s peculiar. I’m older now then he ever was by twenty years. So in a sense he’s the younger man. Anyway, first one I don’t remember too well but it was about meeting him in town somewhere, he’s gonna give me some money. I think I lost it. The second one, it was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback goin’ through the mountains of a night. Goin’ through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept on goin’. Never said nothin’ goin’ by. He just rode on past… and he had his blanket wrapped around him and his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin’ fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. ‘Bout the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin’ on ahead and he was fixin’ to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold, and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up.

October 27, 1947 – October 4, 2009