Philosophical Imagination, Aesthetics, and Creative Writing

  • Film as Poetry: the Poetic Sensibilities of Paolo Sorrentino

    By Lou Hsienhua

    Since when have filmgoers started to expect something truly artistic rather than adopted for popular interests to watch? Perhaps not long after the ongoing artistic revolution that merits personal sensibilities rather than serving a bigger goal in today’s cinematic world around the early 2000s. Now for some filmgoers appreciating artistic expressions on the film, the number of directors that see art as an indispensable element to filmmaking is rising, including those eyeing the effects of social stratification on the socially marginalized groups in modern France, and some others focusing on the complicated relationship between personal sensibilities and social realities in today’s South Korea to the Italian director, Paolo Sorrentino whose specific style of filmmaking poeticized and transformed contemporary cinematography.

    With the public appetite for film switching from movies aiming at commercial success to ones that investigate and explore human life in detail, the tendency for filmmakers to see film as yet another form of serious artistic expression is evident. Few would disagree that film does reflect certain aspects of human life ; but perhaps many would argue whether or not it can be used as a means to poetically represent human life, especially the way that literature did. Seriously, watching movies is unlike reading books; while people see the same scenes before a film, they imagine differently before one specific scene.

    Given the fact that filmmaking is deeply influenced by film producing companies and pressured by need for profits, it’s hard for filmgoers to expect, let alone see in reality, a film featuring something impressively artistic, personal, or poetically beautiful. When film, especially in the ’40s, was used as tools for propaganda, mass entertainment, documenting historical events, it was not unheard of to discover that film was still seen as one of the most expensive ways and the least viable form of artistic creation for ordinary people.

    Photo by Lou Hsienhua

    Till today, one still finds it hard to use film as a means of artistic creation as freely as writing. Filmmaking, to many, is still too expensive a way towards artistic transcendence even after so many decades of relatively steady economic improvement and development in certain parts of the world. One may still deem it impractical to make films specifically focused on exploring something new and underrepresented before when the lack of representation of anything—be it a country, a group of people or another side of a story—reaches a breaking point. But you, some would argue, could choose to write as it’s still the most affordable way to artistically present a previously unrepresented world. But writing, in the end, is unlike filmmaking. And that makes the whole difference.

    That said, in today’s world of filmmaking, the tendency for directors and screenwriters to mix their personal imagination with contemporary social reality to create something reflective of the sensibility of a generation is growing. Unlike writing, which requires a lot of soul searching, an obsession with and tolerance for solitude, filmmaking is, comparatively, a collective activity. That’s means to achieve one same end in creation of art in filmmaking, there must be a lot of effort put on communication between actors and directors. That’s why the harmonious, yet impressive experience of watching Sorrentino’s the Great Beauty seemed so rare.

    Born in Naples in 1970, the Italian director is perhaps best known for his ‘philosophical movie’ the Great Beauty or La Grande Bellezza (2013) wherein he explored the meaning of a city full of sacred elements for an individual on the journey of exploring human nature. And that city is Rome. The Great Beauty, in some way, could be seen as an ode to Rome in the form of motion pictures. From This Must Be the Place to Youth, Sorrentino demonstrates his ability to turn cinematography into poetry.

    Could films like The Great Beauty be cited as the evidences of filmmaking world’s unobvious turn to a certain kind of sentimentality and sensibility previously unexamined before? The answer remains hard to find. But the surge of movies exploring this kind of sentimentality is actually very evident. Besides Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty, we have Todd Haynes’ I’m not Here (2007), Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere (2011), Hong Sang-soo’s Hill of Freedom (2014), Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women (2016). The list could vary and be extended in a reader-by-reader fashion. But the trend is here.

    Photograph by Lou Hsienhua

    Economic advancement lowers the prerequisite for entering the filming world, thus allowing more diverse sensibilities being explored on the film. But with this diversity on hand, what makes Sorrentino’s works unique from so many other films is his very use of a certain kind of poetic imagination in the making of a film.

    His understanding of cinematography involves the full use of various contradictions and conflicts in his filmmaking as if using the literary device of contrast in writing to present something familiar in a completely sharp and alien reflection.

    Also common is his use of flashback in The Great Beauty. When the protagonist in the film, Jep Gambardella, a writer working as a journalist in Rome, dated his old friend’s forty-something daughter, Ramona, the film flashbacks to the moments of protagonist’s adolescent relationship with his first love decades ago. The profaneness and messiness of these characters’ private life seemed on many occasions at odds with the sacredness of Rome. Living in Rome, as we see it on Sorrentino’s film, appears to require a certain kind of numbness to the ills of the real when everything, on the surface, looks so contradictory in a city where the relation between the secular and the sacred is more entwined as to be incomprehensible.

    Adding to the charm of Sorrentino’s films is his specific preference for certain kind of music that often involves classics and symphonies. The soundtracks of his films often resemble a classic music concert.

    It’s too hard to find someone else whose artistic inspiration originates from the desire to capture the beauty of the uncapturable; but here in Sorrentino’s world, the indescribable is truly on the film.

  • Filling Emptiness: On Reading Peter Hessler

    By Lou Hsienhua (Tome Loulin)

    Jiangcheng1, the book title of River Town by Peter Hessler in its Chinese translation, is a nickname for several southern cities in China along the Yangtze River2 such as Wuhan and Chongqing. But in the book, it’s the nickname for Fuling, another city by the river. For Chinese readers, the name itself could evoke complicated feelings because the cultural connotation of the word Jiangcheng—literally meaning river city in Chinese—suggests something poetic. To mention it would, mostly in the southern regions, means to say something about the central Chinese city of Wuhan where Li Bai, a poet in the Tang dynasty, wrote the poem Listening to upstairs flute sounds from the Yellow Crane Tower with Shilangzhong3:

    Going towards Changsha due to demotion,
The man, looking out westwards, was unable to see home.
There were sounds from the flute playing in the Yellow Crane Tower;
Also In the river town, Wuchang, were Chinese plum petals falling in May. 
By poet Li Bai, the English version is translated from Chinese by Lou Hsienhua in 2021.

    So, it might have appeared counterintuitive for readers of the book in its Chinese translation, to discover it’s a collection of reminiscences by an American author recollecting his life as a Peace Crops volunteer in Fuling, in the southwest, in the 1990s, a period that saw rapid economic and cultural transformation happening in the country. At first glance, it’s rather easy to mistake the book as a collection of travel writing authored by someone native of China. But as we look further inside the world portrayed by the author, it’s understandable and sensible for a reader of Chinese to find out in deep awe that the carefully observed details about the river town appear to have been so resonating that the nationality of the author becomes something we gradually forget. Perhaps, besides providing a different perspective on certain things that the locals find to be normal, observations on things closely related to us from the outside offer a rare opportunity for us to see ourselves critically on mature reflection. Overall, one may conclude, from the popularity in China of Peter Hessler’s books even in the translated versions—mostly sold in the category of travel writing—that there is such a thing universally existed as a desire for critical reflections of oneself from the other side. People in one culture crave diverse views of themselves from the outside perhaps for criticalness entails a kind of centrality being given to the overlooked. To be observed, in the first place, suggests a sense of worthiness, a kind of feeling that solaces—albeit temporarily—the lonely minds hungry for serious artistic observation.

    Hessler’s language in his writings seems like a treasure seldom in lack of a sense of humor, even in his observations about small places in southwestern China whose artistic presence—in creative nonfiction writing—seemed, at that time, in short supply as evident in his recollections of the noises from the retired teachers playing croquet in Fuling’s teachers college, which he found lovely. Lovely also is his choice of words in part because there was not much serious attention, then, being paid on areas where economic development was relatively lagged behind, compared to large urban areas in the coastal regions of China.

    Reading Hessler, anyone from China born before the year 2000 and perhaps many more born after would understand how nostalgic it seems to read and reread his recollections of the days and nights he spent living there in Fuling in part because China back in the 1990s is vastly different from where it is now and largely because of a reminiscence of—almost—an era of people—despite relative material and financial restrictions—living their life in simple ways. Certainly living in the last 90s didn’t seem to be an experience dissimilar to living in the 2020s in terms of humanity though reflections on the era vary person-to-person. But everyone knows that back then, in celebration of entering a new millennium, there were various expectations for a new era. Some were not willing to kiss goodbye the ‘old days’; some willing. But mostly, it was those deeply nostalgic about the past rather than those desiring the unprecedented that came to tell us stories critical to our understanding of who we are and where we come from.

    In southern Wuhan, photograph by Lou Hsienhua (Tome Loulin)

    Back in the 90s, living mostly in the rural areas where no one truly owned a colored television until they got married though housing didn’t appear to be such a big issue to many youngsters at that time as is now, I remembered from my mother’s conversations with her friends, that people desired a bigger size of family which means more children and living with grandparents. And, at that time, the influence of postmodern dogmas that merit individualistic ideals, it appeared, didn’t grow so prevalent; and the notion of personal liberity didn’t, yet, evolve into who-cares ideology and radical self-centeredness. People, it seemed then, tend to form more lasting friendships than now in part because social media didn’t emerge at that time; and when it did in this age of information, we bear the brunt of a damaged sense of selfhood. It’s not considered news to discover that people seem to rely completely on virtual and online means to communicate with our friends rather than in-person ways. Thus, no wonder the gradual death of letter writing practice becomes the most significant mark of a divide between the past and now. The 90s, many would argue, is already a distant past so don’t dwell in it.

    But how can one not dwell in it when in the end, it is with the fact that our memories, ableit sometimes inaccurate, shaped our narrative that we come to tell our stories.

    Perhaps, one should know very early on that Hessler’s River Town is not a book about nostalgia nor is any book by certain similar authors like Fuchsia Dunlop, author of Shark Fin and Sichuan Pepper, in part because time is a theme that we write about all our lives. What the authors writing about small places share is an kind of mindfulness fully aware of the vastness of an landscape tainted by its artistic underrepresentation and an understanding that artistic valuation doesn’t need to be centered on certain corners of the world that have already received, relatively, greater attention such as Paris, London, Hong Kong—and the list could be extended. Certainly no truthful and visceral observations about anything related to the ‘big’ places like Hemingway writing about his experience of living in Paris or like Victor Serge writing about his participation in and reflection on the Soviet revolutions would be considered superfluous; rather, they are essential to our moral and intellectual becoming.

    Though, like many other observers from the West, political and ideological elements certainly —if not centrally—captured the attention of the author of River Town, seeing our world in the lens of ideological preferences is, well, almost inevitable. One without the need to cite George Orwell and Victor Serge could easily demonstrate the difficult relationship between politics and art. It’s something every person who wrote and write has to come across. Reflecting on and contemplating the eventful and significant years of the last 60-70s in the US characterized by the civil rights movements and segregation, Toni Morrison made a point about politics influencing art in her preface to her work Sula, stating that if the novel was good, it was because it was faithful to a certain kind of politics; if it was bad, it was because it was faithless to them. One could not help but feel serious literary works of art could hardly be free of ideological influences perhaps in part because ideology is itself a central element that influences how we live. To many, politically influenced writing like those pieces appearing on the op-ed sections with hidden agendas is something whose presence gets larger day by day with the help of social media. What this age in which we live lacks is a calmer voice that tells firsthand experiences about certain matters somewhere distant from a readership that has been told different versions of a story far away from truth. Could we state plainly that what is most in lack in this age of social indifference is truth? Perhaps not with much certainty.

    Notes

    1. Jiangcheng, 江城 in Chinese, is a nickname for several Chinese cities along the river of Changjiang such as Wuhan, Chongqing and other river cities.
    2. The Long River, also called the Yangtze River by the Westerners, is the longest river in Asia. The river is named differently through its vast catchment area or basin covering almost the entire southern part of China exluding areas in Guangdong, Fujian, and Guangxi provinces in the deep south. In Sichuan or the western basin of the Long River, it’s called the Jinsha River whereas in the central Chinese province of Hubei, the middle basin of the Long River, it’s called the Jing River or Jing Jiang. The lower stretch of the river is called the Yangzi River, or the Yangtze, which is now the name widely adopted by the Westerners to refer to the entire Long River. The preferred name for the entire river is simply Chang Jiang, or the Long River.
    3. The poem is 《与史郎中钦听黄鹤楼上吹笛》 in Chinese.

  • Letter from Wuhan: Life After Twenty-five, New Reflections

    By Lou Hsienhua (also known as Tome Loulin)

    Like it or not, life is not going to define us. We define it.

    Several years ago when I graduated from a university in Wuhan, looking for jobs to do, nothing in my late teen and early twenty years may look more mythic than serious consideration of partnership with somebody I like, perhaps, because it involves more attention paid on others whose presence in my life might appear hard to grasp.

    At that summer when I roamed across the streets of Wuhan to look for jobs, the things I cared of a lot were salaries, due payments of rents, and weight loss theories. All of those concerns appeared to me now trivial, relatively, as everything then was still untouched by the pandemic and didn’t require a serious consideration of social isolation. It’s easy to falsify the strength of youth as something lasting forever. For usually, the power of youth makes us fearless, optimistic, forward-looking, and feel whole, the goals of our life after twenty become to stay as young as possible or pretending our every forthcoming birthday is the eighteenth. We were, seemingly, still untouched by the force of time. We were, still, not forced to reflect on the possible impact of aging. We were—just few years ago before the pandemic—yet forced to consider the impact of gradual conversion from late adolescence to early adulthood. We were, yet, to realize the huge responsibility of growing up financially stricken.

    These things, as I sensed out, had yet to make an impact on my sense of selfhood. Money, I learned not too late, is necessary to get things around. And that’s something I didn’t have much so, naturally, after my graduation from the university, I took job interviews seriously even though with the awareness that those interviewers didn’t take me seriously. Usually, the outcome of an hour-long bus ride to an interviewer’s office plus hours more of preparations was a brief conversation that could hardly result in anything closer to an offer.

    Thus, at that time, it didn’t appear unusual to see me work in retail stores and in other jobs that didn’t pay much. Even before 2020, I was in financial trouble due to the low-paying nature of the jobs I took. Urban poverty—though didn’t appear familiar to me then—became a perfect phrase to describe the very situation I was in until my enrolling into a graduate school one year ago in Wuhan.

    By the time I got to the city again, I started to miss what I had left behind then before the pandemic. For example, I started to miss that version of myself several years ago that usually take things relatively lightly. For example, I started to miss the appetencies I had for socialization. I had been taking low-paying jobs in the city years ago but still feeling intellectually thriving because my identity and self-value were not much affected by others’ treatment of me. I learned not to take others’ view of me personally, to defy others’ misconception of my value and to hold firm my own sense of who I really am.

    This ability to resist that social molding is vital to our survival. I took that seriously. My heart still turned warm when I recollected a conversation that I had in a dating with a person who tried to remember the exact scent extracted from a grapefruit essential oil I liked in order to, also, remember me when we were not together.

    Mindful of the warmth I felt when conversing with those who showed respects, care, consideration to me, I, for the very first time in my life, started, seriously, to learn from them, from their lovingness, considerateness, and gentleness. I often thought, how much love one can show to others is, really, determined by the portion of love he/she received.

    Aware also of the fact that early adulthood is a complicated thing, I tried to remain open-minded, willing to learn the other side of something I knew or not. And I was also lost, in the middle of nowhere. The beliefs considered important by me turned out misguiding when I apparently found that following them could cause more harm than good to my sense of wholesomeness as evident in my thinking that being perfect in many aspects of our life was truly desirable. It really wasn’t.

    Being relatively ordinary, I recognized lately, was more desirable then being extraordinary in some cases. One of such cases, I realized, was the extreme pursuit of forever youth, and beauty. Being beautiful is one of the traits and benefits youth offers and is, among other things, the most desirable things to preserve. Popular cultures now no matter in the East or in the West glorify the concept of beauty supremacy, which usually results in people doing things harmful to their bodies to achieve the ideal state of beauty.

    Such idealization of beauty in our society is prevalent as evident in the believers buying cosmetic products almost all in excess without a second thought.

    If I state plainly that I cared less about fashion trends, cosmetic products, or clothes that may help me feel better about how I look to others, that, some may argue, is normal, even preferable, because I—as a member of a sex that is said, in conventional standards, to focus more about being powerful than about attracting the powerful—was not expected to take those things seriously. Yet, this change of habits is not caused by something unexpected, since the entire world now is still upside down and caring for ‘the superficial’ may be impropriate. But if, also, I say I started to care even less about news headlines, contentious geopolitical comments, editorials, apparent misinformation of almost everything crucial for our social stability, a lot of disbelief may come around because, as a member of a gender that is believed by many in society to be the seeker of power, no one in that group is believed able to resist the attraction of politics, which is, perhaps, the source of all powers. But it’s certainly true that I denounce severely the inflammatory nature of politic games, power grabs, and war talks. But, indeed, seeing news outlets propagating that ‘some’ country or group of people exposes a serious threat to the security of blah blah isn’t really helpful to anyone sitting before that screen intellectually.

    The exact wording of the news media nowadays is like one from a troubled adolescent. Life after twenty is a complicated matter and it already is before that. As the poem has it:

    Actually, we don’t need a house,
    To stay contented.
    Our chests lay down on the ground
    Like flowers from afar,
    Petals from potted flowers on the desk fall by the winds breezing away.
    Rivers flowing through my palms are so distant from the soft earth.
    My entire life, it seems, is up in the air.
    Every evening before the sun sets,
    People wait for the leaves to fall where the roots are.

    The poem in the end of the essay, Waiting to Go back, is by Jiang Di, and is translated from Chinese into English by Lou Hsienhua.