Jonathan Poritsky

Earlier today I found myself sub­mit­ting a blog entry in honor of the death of Ingmar Bergman, a man whose work has influ­enced me greatly but to whom I have had no direct con­nec­tion through­out my life. While this tends to be a forum for my thoughts on film and other arts, it seems fool­ish to go with­out men­tion­ing a good friend of mine who the world lost a year ago, Michael Levin.

Mike was a friend of mine back at Council Rock High School, where we sat next to each other in geom­e­try our Junior. But that, of course, was to be our least excit­ing aspect of that year. From February to April of 2001, we went on the same trip to Israel with the Alexander Muss High School in Israel. It was an intense eight-week pro­gram in the mid­dle of the school year that fol­lowed a rig­or­ous cur­ricu­lum of Israeli and Jewish his­tory, from the Torah to today. We also had tutors keep­ing us up to speed with our American stud­ies. Mike and I had the same tutor for Geometry over there, which was just a lit­tle bit of a joke for the two of us. We just had too much fun.

We were all greatly moved and changed by that expe­ri­ence in Israel, though any­one that went on the trip could attest to the fact that Mike was affected on a more pro­found level. When we came back, there were a few of us who remained in yarmulke and tzit-tzit (the fringes that hang from your shirt), but as the weeks strained on back in our trendy, sub­ur­ban, over­whelm­ingly Jewish pub­lic school, we all fell back into rou­tine. Not Mike though. His mind was made up dur­ing the trip about how he would live the rest of his life.

Many of us con­sid­ered mak­ing Aliyah and mov­ing to Israel, serv­ing in the Army, and mak­ing a life in the Jewish home­land. But for many of us, the allure of an American col­lege expe­ri­ence won our hearts over. Of course, not Mike. He told us his plans all along, to move there after High School and join the para­troop­ers, an elite unit of the Israeli Defense Forces. We of course ragged on him, for we weren’t sure yet how seri­ous he was. His Hebrew, like our own, was inad­e­quate for most things let alone tak­ing orders in the army.

Mike was also seemed an awk­ward fel­low at times back then. He was obsessed with dance films, espe­cially those with Julia Stiles that were so pop­u­lar in high school. He even knew a num­ber of bal­let posi­tions. Whenever this sub­ject came up a macho but­ton inside of me would go off, but the joke was always on me. Talking about dance always got him the best girls. Always. For his abil­ity to climb most any­thing put in front of him, his nick­name on the trip was Mogley, which matched per­fectly to his curly hair.

After high school we all went our sep­a­rate ways and tried our best to keep in touch. But with Michael in Israel, at first as a stu­dent and then as a cit­i­zen, he and I grew far out of touch. I have always regret­ted this, but I fig­ured once we all set­tled and the tumult of col­lege and army were through, there would be plenty of time to catch up on those lost years.

While my close friend Kevin, who was like a brother to Michael, was on a trip to New Orleans with his campers last sum­mer, I called him to say hello, tak­ing advan­tage of pre­cious cell ser­vice out­side of the camp. He was excited to announce “I’ve got Michael on the other line!” and then con­nected us via con­fer­ence call. He was back home in Holland, PA, cut­ting his leave early to go back and join his unit as war had bro­ken out in Southern Lebanon. He was leav­ing the next day for Israel. As usual, he was of few words, even though I hadn’t spo­ken with him in many months. I had to press him for infor­ma­tion on his life, for there was noth­ing glam­orous about it to him. It was just his own life. When he told me why he was head­ing back, I said two things to him: “Be safe. Kick some ass.”

Now, this is about the point where the Michael we all knew ends and the leg­end begins. I do not mean this as an insult to his mem­ory, for every­thing that hap­pened in the ensu­ing weeks is very true. I sim­ply mean to say that a lot has been writ­ten on Mike, and much of it focuses on these last two weeks. It is so com­pelling that it almost seems like a sto­ry­book, and not the guy we knew. All I’ll say more on this is that he found a way to force him­self back to his unit in Lebanon.

On Monday night, July 31st last year, I spoke with my par­ents who had just come from an Israel rally at a local syn­a­gogue that was packed to the gills with around 1000 peo­ple. Rockets were rain­ing down on north­ern Israel by the hun­dreds every day, caus­ing major cities along the bor­der to evac­u­ate and send their cit­i­zens to bomb shel­ters. This was war as I had never seen in my life­time in Israel. This was what the Israeli Defense Forces gear up for. This was why Mike joined the mil­i­tary: not to fight for the sake of fight­ing, but to defend the Jewish state. And so in the sub­urbs of Philly, a crowd of a thou­sand stood and cheered as Michael’s fam­ily was announced. The fam­ily of a local boy fight­ing for exactly what we all we wished we could fight for. my par­ents told me how excited the whole com­mu­nity was for him. That Monday, Michael went into Lebanon.

On Tuesday, August 1st, I opted to shirk my evening respon­si­bil­i­ties at the camp I was teach­ing film­mak­ing at and head out to the town of Milford, which boasted a sin­gle really nice cof­fee­house. Toting my New York Times, I ordered a cup of joe and looked for­ward to relax­ing in its aro­mas before tak­ing that first deli­cious sip. Then my dad called with the news of Michael’s death. I had almost pre­pared myself for this ter­ri­fy­ing news, but I still could not wrap my head around it. I had spo­ken to him a few weeks before. We were to catch up and get together later, after the war.

His death was fol­lowed by a media frenzy. He was the first American killed in this con­flict, and his life story was so com­pelling that no one could resist it. His par­ents receive let­ters by the ton telling of how his story touched so many lives. By the end of the week he was on the front page of every paper in the coun­try. But his friends grieved together, with­out all that noise. It was almost, even at that dark time, enter­tain­ing to see what facts were real and which fab­ri­cated in all the sto­ries from around the world, espe­cially the spelling of his name and his age.

This past March I finally went to visit him in Israel, though sadly it was at the Har Herzl Cemetery, Israel’s equiv­a­lent of Arlington National. Here is a retelling of a trip there I wrote after return­ing to the states in March:

Our sched­ule was incred­i­bly packed, but we wanted to make sure we went to Har Herzl a few times since that was the main rea­son for our trip. Midway through how­ever, we had only been there once. So Wednesday night, after return­ing from din­ner at a friend’s in Maccabeam, we hopped a cab directly to the ceme­tery. When our cab dri­ver told us we’re crazy because it’s closed, we told him we have a friend in there. He went on to drop us off by the museum end of the moun­tain. Did he think our friend was Theodore Herzl him­self? There were light show­ers in Jerusalem all day, but at this time the rain had stopped. The cab­bie made a u-turn and dropped us off at the proper point. This had been my sec­ond time to Mike’s Grave and Kevin’s third since he was at the funeral. On our first time on this trip, Mike’s friend Baruch led the way to the grave, and Kevin could hardly rec­og­nize the place from the funeral as there were so many peo­ple around that day. Suffice it to say, we were alone on a damp night with only some clue as to where to find the proper grave. It all felt rather, I don’t know, “Scooby-Doo” I guess, but we man­aged to retain our com­po­sure and keep the solem­nity of the place. So we passed through the main gate and made our way to the first stair­way. After some dis­cus­sion, we fig­ured that was the proper way to go. So we both placed a sin­gle foot on the first step lead­ing into the ceme­tery ready to begin our way up the dimly lit stairs, when, sud­denly, all of the lights at Har Herzl went out at once with a bright blue flash. Thunder began to rum­ble from behind the moun­tain and the rain started again. There we were, in the mid­dle of a ceme­tery at night in the rain with no lights any­where. We reacted in the only log­i­cal man­ner, we bolted in the oppo­site direc­tion for the gate and back out to the street hys­ter­i­cally laugh­ing. We just couldn’t con­tain our­selves any longer. Thank good­ness no other fam­i­lies of sol­diers were there to wit­ness this silli­ness. But we both knew, with­out say­ing it, that Mike would cer­tainly join in our laugh­ter were he out­side the gates with us. More likely than not, he was laugh­ing at us from within the gates. We finally con­tained our­selves and made it back to his grave as the rain came down harder. There was much silence between us. When we came with other peo­ple, we would share sto­ries about Mike, but not this time. This time was much more per­sonal. We just stood there and thought about him. I took some pho­tos, some­thing I had hes­i­tated to do before mak­ing this trip. It felt inap­pro­pri­ate to take pic­tures of a friend’s grave, until I real­ized that it is so help­ful for those who can­not make this jour­ney to visit him so often. Not to men­tion Mike had his big SLR strapped around his neck every­where we went on our trip to Israel in high school. We stood in the rain until we felt we didn’t need to stand there any­more. We returned the next day in sleet and snow for our final visit before leav­ing Jerusalem. I guess Mike wanted to make sure we would have sto­ries to tell.

I know this is run­ning on and mean­der­ing and such, but it’s so hard to orga­nize so many thoughts on one per­son. To many peo­ple, Michael’s story and tragic end make him a hero. But I can hon­estly say, with­out pour­ing on the cheese at all, that he was a hero of mine well before he went to bat­tle, before he joined the Army, before he moved to Israel. We have a song that we sing at the Passover Seder, “Deyeinu”, “It Would Have Been Enough…” dur­ing which we recount all the things G-d did for us and how we didn’t even need every­thing. Mike, as that wiley char­ac­ter I knew and respected and loved and laughed with in high school, would have been enough. But of course, Michael Levin strove for so much more.

”prob­a­bly the great­est film artist, all things con­sid­ered,
since the inven­tion of the motion pic­ture cam­era,”

 

–Woody Allen on Ingmar Bergman, 1988

“Ingmar Bergman, the “poet with the cam­era” who is con­sid­ered one of the great­est direc­tors in motion pic­ture his­tory, died today on the small island of Faro where he lived on the Baltic coast of Sweden, Astrid Soderbergh Widding, pres­i­dent of The Ingmar Bergman Foundation, said. Bergman was 89.”

I make no claims to be an expert on the films or life of Ingmar Bergman. In fact my view­ing of his work has gap­ing holes in it, sadly. Still, I know enough to have been greatly influ­enced by his films in both the ways I look at cin­ema and how I myself try to create.

Much has been said on the man and much more will be writ­ten, and I’m sure in due time there will be more trav­el­ing prints of his work avail­able, though ret­ro­spec­tives on the man have never been in short sup­ply. But I’d just like to throw in a few of my own words on the man.

The first Bergman film I’d ever seen was “Autumn Sonata” in col­lege. It took so long for me to come around to him as Ingrid was the only Bergman we usu­ally watched in my house grow­ing up. I was enchanted right away Nykvyst’s del­i­cately haunt­ing cam­era and Liv Ullman’s ranged per­for­mance. But of course, it was Bergman’s orches­tra­tion of all the ele­ments that had the great­est effect on me. It was one of those “I didn’t know we could do that moments” for me, when I noticed there was more to cin­ema than I thought there could be. It remains on my short-list of favorite films of all time.

…

I had begun to write about my favorite films of the man, but I must say there is lit­tle room for reflec­tion at this time. I must go back and seek out those films I love and those I have not yet exposed myself to. Which I of course encour­age to all.

He was an artist like no other, and per­haps his great­est film was still pend­ing, but he left us with a reper­toire so vast and incred­i­ble, we’ll for­give for not hav­ing made it.

 

In the sum­mer of 2002, after the release of Chris Columbus’ screen adap­ta­tion of the Sorcerer’s Stone, I vowed not to see the film until I attempted read­ing the novel. After com­plet­ing the first para­graph I became hooked. I devoured the novel with every free moment and sought out the sub­se­quent sequels. The past three nov­els I have pur­chased upon their release and made every effort to fin­ish them dili­gently. This sev­enth and final install­ment was the one I was able to com­plete faster than any of them, prob­a­bly because of a need inside to reach the end sooner rather than later. It may also be, per­haps, that this one will prob­a­bly rank as my least favorite in the series once I go back and re-read/rate each one. That cov­eted prize belongs to the third book, Prisoner of Azkaban, which is also my favorite film for unre­lated rea­sons.

But onto the last book of the cycle.

I was hop­ing for “Return of the Jedi” and alas, I was deliv­ered “A New Hope”. This refers to the intro­duc­tion of Luke Skywalker in both films. By “Jedi”, our final install­ment of that great mythol­ogy, Skywalker is a war­rior, a for­mi­da­ble foe doing gym­nas­tics and pulling mind tricks left and right. These books are quite long and this is the sev­enth of the series, com­ing in just shy of 800 pages. For good­ness sake, J.K., why is Harry still such a dweeb? We have seen all of this before. We watched him learn of his near-royal past; we wit­nessed his first kiss(es); we saw him strug­gle with his crown of thorns amongst doubters of his impor­tance; and we have seen him strug­gle with his friends and elders. Call me old fash­ioned, but by now he should be ready for any­thing, he should be Skywalker, John McClane, Man-With-No-Name, Odysseus.

Part of what causes this issue is that, as many will for­get, this is still a children’s book. There was a time (Azkaban) when I con­sid­ered these nov­els high lit­er­a­ture, explor­ing parts of the human psy­che that other works dared not ven­ture. I still feel that way about much of the cycle, but now is the time for clo­sure, and the soon-to-be-oft-cited exam­ple of “The Sopranos” proves that audi­ences rebel when clo­sure is not given. So Ms. Rowling has offered a book of answers. Answers to nearly every ques­tion you have, and every­thing Harry has mis­un­der­stood through his tenure at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

What turns out to be most unfor­tu­nate in the end is that Harry is the least inter­est­ing char­ac­ter of the series. The most inter­est­ing through­out has been Severus Snape, which also plays out in the films. But just like in the films, he hardly gets any air time. And an even more unno­ticed char­ac­ter whose lay­ers could pos­si­bly fill vol­umes is Narcissus Malfoy, mother to the das­tardly blonde Draco. Then there’s the rel­a­tively unseen Aunt Petunia, who’s com­monly sug­gested arpeg­gio turns out to be just the same bor­ing note. As the audi­ence, we are given the unfor­tu­nate view­point of Harry, while a more omni­scient nar­ra­tor could have given us so many more oppor­tu­ni­ties to under­stand this world.

Of course, as the novel winds down, we see Harry the hero, fully aware of his pow­ers and his pur­pose. This where Rowling proves her pow­ers an action writ­ers. She builds these scenes toward the end of the book, what I will call the last night of the book as not to spoil the fun for you read­ers, up to a glo­ri­ous cli­max. This is where the right infor­ma­tion is with­held so that we can keep on the edge of our seats whilst read­ing the book right up to the bit­ter end.

There is a lot at stake with this novel. The audi­ence for this novel is so wide that there is no way Rowling can keep every­one happy at once. Like a great car­toon, the kids will be happy but the adults may actu­ally under­stand it. What’s so fas­ci­nat­ing about this series is that while the audi­ence and the main char­ac­ter have grown up together, the prose hasn’t. There is a def­i­nite pro­gres­sion to the deeper and darker side of things through each install­ment, how­ever, the writ­ing itself remains extremely sim­ple and direct with a wide-ranging vocab­u­lary. It may in fact be one of the best SAT study tools out there. This is rather unfor­tu­nate as an 8-year old who became hooked on the first book would have recently grad­u­ated high-school, already hav­ing con­sumed “To Kill a Mockingbird”, “Beowulf”, and “The Sound and the Fury”, yet this final act is writ­ten for that same 8 year old.

I say all of these things because I can. In her genoros­ity, Ms. Rowling ded­i­cated the novel to me and all oth­ers who stuck with Harry this whole time. Well with that I respond that I wanted more. The plot is all there, the story makes per­fect sense, and I’m cer­tain some­where Joseph Campbell is smil­ing. But still, J.K., you cre­ated this beau­ti­ful palette of char­ac­ters, spells, and plot­lines, and in the end you took it and gave us exactly what every­one wanted: facts. I was hop­ing this go-round we could get even deeper inside. I sup­pose we’ll just have to wait for the spin­offs.

Coming soon…“Hermione’s Head“

---

I also want to talk briefly about what these books are all about. The series is so British, and in this novel more than any of them, the focus is World War II. Time and place is always impor­tant in such things, and read­ers would be fas­ci­nated to learn that the series does not take place in our own times, a fact that has never been appar­ent before this novel. Harry’s par­ents died on Halloween of 1981, at which time he was not yet a year old, mak­ing the books take place roughly from 1992–2000, in which case it would seem as though it may serve as post-cold war strug­gles, but alas, the WWII mood is unde­ni­able in my eyes.

There is an inde­scrib­able evil sweep­ing through­out the land, and the only way to stop it is to stand up in favor of good­ness and right. As with every­thing else about the book, I wish Ms. Rowling took more advan­tage of this rela­tion­ship. We Yankees tend to for­get what the 30s and 40s were for Europeans. We watched from across an ocean in hor­ror, but our lives were hardly affected through most of Hitler’s reign. Whereas much of London’s great­est archi­tec­ture was destroyed dur­ing the war, and there was a very real pos­si­bil­ity that one’s chil­dren may be raised by the Third Reich. The stakes are just as high in Harry Potter in which the Wizarding world is fight­ing not just for it’s own sur­vival, but for it’s exis­tence with Muggles, or the non-magic folk for those unaware of these terms.

Of course, as the book touches on but never resolves, there are other mag­i­cal races to take into account besides wiz­ards. This is one of those points of the book that is so poignant yet hardly rumi­nated upon as we must get back to the story to keep the kids enter­tained. My per­sonal favorite to decon­struct are the Goblins, who I find to be the Jews of the story. (although there is one wiz­ard who pops up with a name like Adam Goldstein or some­thing for no appar­ent rea­son) I remem­ber feel­ing a bit uneasy the first time Harry goes to Gringotts Wizarding Bank to find the gob­lins run­ning the show. Both in the book and their cin­e­matic coun­ter­parts (pic­tured right), they phys­i­cally share many char­ac­ter­is­tics with the worst of anti-semitic prop­ganda. Big nose, beady eyes, fangs, and stodgy stature. We learn in this novel not only that they not only keep the bank secure, but that they are rather greedy crea­tures who will not uphold their end of busi­ness agree­ments. Did some­one say Shylock?

I’m not accus­ing the author or the pub­lish­ers of any wrong­do­ing, sim­ply not enough doing to resolve these other wiz­ard­ing races’ lots in life. If good did pre­vail and evil has been van­quished, than can Muggle and Wizard live side by side? Who cares, when Giant, Elf, Goblin, and Centaurs haven’t yet worked their respec­tive shit? If the cli­mate over in Europe since WWII, and on our own shores, has taught us any­thing, it’s that the real social bat­tles had only begun. Let’s hope the next book from the 136th rich­est per­son in Britain addresses these press­ing matters.

No reviews, noth­ing too much impor­tant to say here, so I’ll make it quick. Those of you who knew me back in film school knew that I had a knack for tear­ing deep into a work that I found flawed or incom­plete. During the for­ma­tive years of my film edu­ca­tion I sim­ply found it more reward­ing to point out the prob­lems and holes in a film in hopes of learn­ing how to avoid them myself.

However, for about the past year, I came to find this method far too neg­a­tive, and ulti­mately a bad influ­ence on my own karma or what-have-you. So I began latch­ing on to the pos­i­tives I could find and explor­ing those aspects; see­ing what it was in films that I was unable to cre­ate myself that was so fas­ci­nat­ing, even if other aspects of the work suf­fered or were non-existent. It is this that has brought me so close to the sum­mer block­buster, that has made me bask in the bright glory of the sum­mer 2007 BO returns.

No more.

After the “Simpsons Movie” (for I’m pos­i­tive the hor­rors this movie will hold may be too great for even my pow­ers), I vow to return to my ini­tial form of cin­e­matic decon­struc­tion. No pris­on­ers will be taken, not even the ven­er­a­ble Tony Scott. I’m bust­ing back like Voldemort out of a Horcrux kids.

So to my three devoted read­ers: don’t say I didn’t warn you.

 
..>

..>

From the back cover

I have ben spend­ing much of my time study­ing the works of Woody Allen. It’s not n easy task as his direct­ing tally creeps closer to 50 and his writ­ing cred­its have become innu­mer­able. Once upon a time come­di­ans wrote for a liv­ing. Perhaps it would be more accu­rate to say that peo­ple devoured what it was that come­di­ans scrawled across mag­a­zines, news­pa­pers, short com­pi­la­tions, and of course, the great American novel. Woody Allen fit into this mix back in the days of yore, and he hasn’t really ever taken a break. He remains an hilar­i­ous thinker and quick tongued funny-man, with an end­less grab bag of one lin­ers that keep the chuck­les coming.

I made the fool­ish mis­take of read­ing this lat­est com­pendium in (prac­ti­cally) one sit­ting. I found it at B&N yes­ter­day after­noon and decided to tear through it in time to read “Deathly Hallows”. Each short story was enjoy­able, but I found myself trudg­ing through some of them, leaf­ing to the next break to see how much longer until a new face appears. That being said, I thor­oughly enjoy most of the sto­ries. The first five or so had me rolling on the floor. As I said, mov­ing through became a lit­tle less fun, but there are cer­tainly worse things out there to peruse.

In Sidney Lumet’s “Making Movies”, the film­maker posits the ques­tion to Arthur Miller why he would pre­fer the the­ater if his first novel, “Focus”, which pre­dates his sub­se­quent suc­cesses, had every bit of strength as his stage sto­ries. The writer replied some­thing to the tune of lov­ing the col­lab­o­ra­tive process. If for Miller it was cama­raderie that kept him under the lime-lights, then it seems to be the pres­sures of films that keep Allen on the sil­ver screen and off the bound page. When one is cut­ting checks in the mil­lions for bagels and knishes on an over­seas shoot, one damn well bet­ter hope to hell the script is in order.

Here, Allen lets loose and sets him­self up to fail. And I promise, some of these shorts are fail­ures. But it’s so won­der­ful to see the vision­ary branch out to ter­ri­tory he is not ready to do on the big screen. He is fairly detached from some things he writes about, but you can see he has done research enough to keep the facts straight. One of the book’s biggest mistake’s is a seg­ment called Surprise Rocks Disney Trial. As we are all well aware, Mr. Allen is an east coast New Yorker no mat­ter what locale he may find him­self liv­ing in. This is an LA story he’s try­ing to tell, mock­ing the pol­i­tics of the big bad Mouse House. Written as matter-of-factly as a stenog­ra­pher would likely have taken the exchange down, a big mouthed Mickey Mouse takes the stand and quips about his ani­mated friends. This is the stuff of adult swim wannabe kids who got a copy of Flash for Christmas. Where it does suc­ceed is in see­ing the mas­ter film­maker try out some­thing he is not known to do.

The novel really flies in seg­ments that have hard boiled detec­tives or down on their luck actors. The names in the book are almost all hilar­i­ous in them­selves. Names like Mealworm and Fleshpot. It is in the hard boiled tales like Tandoori Ransom and This Nib for Hire that he really flies. One must keep a the­saurus close to keep up with his wit­ti­cisms, which at times feel like overblown intel­lec­tu­alisms, but in actu­al­ity, as one may find in his films, are a mile-a-minute pas­tiche of obser­va­tions of this thing we have called pop cul­ture all this time. While “Family Guy” rises in pop­u­lar­ity for Dallas ref­er­ences or Margot Kidder appear­ances, Allen under­stands the inter­con­nect­ed­ness of all things art. That is why he can write a rare cook­book in the style of Friedrich Nietzsche in Thus Ate Zarathustra(“Man is the only crea­ture who ever stiffs a waiter.”), or call upon Dostoevsky to quip of the doomed future of a three-year old denied a decent pre-school in The Rejection. He rec­og­nizes that we all share one com­mu­nity, and what is pop now is sim­ply an old trick taught to a new dog.

I’ve long said that I love Allen’s films because even when I see a bad one, I leave the the­ater happy. The same rings true for this book. While he may not be chang­ing the indus­try or mak­ing it on any best­seller lists, he’s writ­ing bet­ter than many oth­ers out there. He writes like frog sit on lily pads, it’s just in his nature. I’ve heard peo­ple accuse him of still work­ing sim­ply for the sake of it, rather than actu­ally mak­ing a great film or novel every time out. To them I say piss off. There is no deny­ing that Woody will con­tinue cre­at­ing until he is taken from us. We must sim­ply enjoy it while can, for there will never be another like him.