IDYLLOPUS PRESS IS A VALIANT LITTLE ROWBOAT

That I was able to sit through “Record of a Living Being”, which was terribly translated, abysmally translated, is a testament to Kurosawa’s remarkable powers as a story teller just via his cinematography.

Below is a blog of the film, but first some background. The film was made in 1955, coming between the “Seven Samurai” and “The Throne of Blood”. In 1954 the US and USSR and Great Britain had been staging experimental explosions and fallout struck Japan in the form of radioactive rain, as with other northern countries. The Japanese were alarmed by the testings and later by the fallout. I read that a number of films were made on the subject of radiation at that time, and Kurosawa made his own, “Record of a Living Being”, inspired by the suggestion of the composer with whom he’d worked for ten years, who was then dying of tuberculosis. It began as a satire and though it instead became a drama it’s comedic roots are obvious. Instead of lightening the subject the residual comedy makes the film seem broader in scope, showcasing not only the subject of The Bomb, but saying something of the human condition in general, and more specifically that of an elderly man who rules his family with the near mini-Shogun authority, his overwhelming sense of responsibility to them, and how it molds their response to him. In more than one respect we have here the root of Kurosawa’s later adaptation of “King Lear” in “Ran”.

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RECORD OF A LIVING BEING

Jazzy music opens the film with a seeming hint of theramin, interestingly. The theramin was first used in sci fi flim in “The Day the Earth Stood Still”, and became a 50’s sci fi staple, evoking immediately other-worldly futuristic intenrior landscapes. I’ve no idea if these films made it to Japan during the 50s and if they were popular there, but the use defies here the futuristic sci-fi monsters. Though Kurosawa opens broad with cars, cable cars and people flooding a Japanese street, coming and going, the focus will soon narrow down and concern the real fear of radiation as it effects a seemingly tyrannical family head who can indeed be viewed as a “monster” partly created by radiation, in this case the fear of it.

Narrowing down, we pass by a cable car , see into a dentist’s office beyond, then move into the office itself. A boy waits to have his teeth worked on by Takashi Shimura playing Dr. Harada, probably best known as the head samurai in the “Seven Samurai” and who has one of the more expressive faces, I think, in cinema history.

A woman given as his daughter enters and calls Dr. Harada to the phone. The Medical Association has promoted him to be a committee member (so says the film’s translation which means in this case he is a counselor in Family Court). The dentist working alongside him is his son and informs the person upon he’s working about how the duty involves divorces, settling agreements and the like; he talks of how his dad likes to be a negotiator and he’s forced to listen to him. When his dad comes back in complaining he is expected at court all afternoon, the son and the patient exchange knowing smiles.

The next scene is of Dr. Harada approaching the Family Court room and coming upon a family in heated, lively discussion of a dispute. The translation is so bad I’ve no idea what the argument is about and when a typically laconic, disgruntled teenage boy tells a man, “We both come from the same hole”, I wonder what in the world this could mean, and if it might have the meaning that first leaps to mind. The camera finally focuses on a typically laconic, disgruntled teenage girl who stands mopping herself with a handkerchief then vigorously fans herself. Whether she’s almost crying or simply in a mood is difficult to tell.

The ensemble acting is already a pleasure to watch. I’m familiar with no other director, outside of Fellini, who accomplishes what Kuosawa does with this many people. Not to say they don’t exist, I’m just unfamiliar. Even Altman in his group scenes tends to focus on individuals whereas Kurosawa can fill a frame with actors, keep the camera distant, and manage to make each stand out as a fully fleshed individual.

Everyone at the famliy court seems to be concerned with convincing their father with something as Dr. Harada enters the court room. A woman apologizes for her father’s impulsiveness. Perhaps we’re supposed to be confused about what’s going on, everyone anxious, but one grasps just how bad the translation problem will be right now, the dad saying to his son, “Why can you say some mature words? You only peep on my assets.”

Only peep on my assets?

The son attempts to reassure his dad that the whole of Japan is as worried as he is. The dad fans himself, then slams the table asking why his sons won’t listen to him, coffee spilling, and his wife in the background begins wailing as the dentist looks on with a confident, passive interest. Another man complains of their losing face. (Very important, you don’t want to lose face! Which brings to mind the “No Face” monster in “Spirited Away” and makes me wonder if it’s a direct translation.)

The court steps in to good-naturedly explain that it’s their job to listen and try to give advice. And everyone continues to wipe themselves with their handkerchiefs, the heat so oppressive as to seem blistering. They send everyone out and read up on the problem.

“The victim is Chung’s wife. Chung in June last year. To the radiation format the bomb.”

The council pauses to look at each other.

I wonder into what land I’ve been dropped. Chung? Chung?! The father’s name is supposed to be Kiichi Nakajima, played by Toshiro Mifune who was only 35 at the time, acting a man twice his age. I knew Mifune starred but watching the old man I had difficulty grasping this was Mifune, except for his hands. I recognized Mifune’s hands. If there is a moment where you think, “This isn’t an old man,” it’s when his actions are too quick and vigorous, but even then it suits the character of this old man who stands supported by the cane. You think, yes, this is a man whose wrath could easily eclipse physical infirmity.

So here is just how bad the translation is.

“Feels so frightened. Is sick of worries. In September of the same year he needed to leave home. Ignored the objection of the family. Bought 480 miles of land in Chow. To build some strange houses. November the same year. Knew that the place might be radiated. To stop the progress. As a result. Make the chung’s family to suffer a loss of 7.4 million. But to his strange behavior. He didn’t feel sorry and became mad. Chung wanted to find a piece of peace land on earth. In South America. Planned to migrate to Basil (note: not a typo) . In order to implement. He declared to use all wealth. The family therefore applied for an injunction from the court. If it lasts. Chung’s behavior will destroy the family life. So we have this declaration.”

The court stands about looking puzzled. Are you? I am. Basil! You will be even more amazed when you read the translation I happen to have in ‘The Films of Akira Kurosawa” by Donald Richie. (Oh, hi Fred. The resident waterbug scoots across the kitchen floor. He has more lives than a cat.)

“I demand that Kiichi Nakajima be certified quasi-incompetent on grounds that the appelant, wife of said Kiichi Nakajima, finds that since June of last year he has become suddenly, extremely and inexplicably fearful of atomic and hydrogen bombs and of the radioactivity thereof, and, seking to evade radioactivity from the south did, despite the opposition of his family, puchase property in Akita Prefecture, and did begin to build an underground shelter. Further, upon learning that radioactivity was coming from the north as well, he stopped this construction thus causing his family the meaningless loss of seven million yen. His conduct has now continued and, stating that safety lies only in South America, he has wilfully planned his family’s emigration, declaring that he will invest all funds he possesses in order to realize this aim. Unless he is declared quazi-incompetent and is placed under a guardian, not only his own but the lives of his entire fmily will be in jeapordy, and the family will be ruined. Therefore, the court is requested to take this procedure.”

Now you tell me how we got from that to “Bought 480 miles of land in Chow to build some strange houses…”

Huh?

The victims (the children) are called back in and the children encourage the mother to go in as well as she is a victim too. I’m thinking there are a lot of children but why are some going in the court room and some staying outside. Who are children and who are in-laws? A man who is given as the husband of a daughter attempts to go in but is told, “Outsiders can go in” by the secretary who bars his way and he nods assent and stays outside.

Big translation problems here which is too bad as it’s beautifully filmed and acted.

Go from a shot of Nakajima sitting and fuming to one of the Dr. Harada, his day at court over sitting at home drinking a bit of sake or beer it seems, in his t-shirt. He is seated on the floor at table with his son who is reading a newspaper. With a look of concern, he asks his son, “Chun, what do you see the bombs of radiation, hydrogen?” His son wants to know why. Dr. Harada asks if it’s frightening and his son says everyone is frightened. So, the dentist asks, why does his son not seem frightened. (The answer is garbled by the translation.) Dr. Harada says, never-the-less, someone is planning on escaping. The son says that person must be mad. Dr. Harada disagrees and says no he’s not mad.

The story could have been told without the dentist, he’s inessential, but he represents the fears of many in Japan.

Another city scene, industrial. Men on a truck. They are backing it into place by a stairway where stands Nakajima. They begin shoveling out coal, I guess. By holding and observing the coal, people discuss its quality. It’s the family business apparently (turns out they run a foundry) and the dad is arguing about the price of the coal or something. In the background the children continue to argue with each other over the court case, condemning each other.

A car arrives, greeted by Nakajima. Who is the apparently wealthy man who gets out of it? A person approaches and asks Mrs. Chung if she’s sure about her decision, much to everyone’s confusion. The visitor who disembarked the car is identified as a farmer. He sets up a projector and displays his prosperous South American farm on film. His smile is huge. It is too big, too brilliant. “That is your house!” he says to Nakajima. In the film within a film, he walks toward the camera with his bright white smile, waving happy greetings in the brillant South American sun.

Nakajima visits various members of his family who each confound him by protesting that they will not be going with him to Basil. When he visits his youngest son who is still asleep in a run-down apartment, the son protests, “This is not good. Not for dad to use the asset”, to which Nakajima replies, “The decision is not human being.” He reassures his son (and himself) that he saw the farm film and that it looks good. He feels better for having seen it. But the son says he will not go.

His daughters protest that they won’t be going.

No one wants to migrate with Nakajima and he simply can’t understand it. Why won’t they listen to him? He’s the “host” of the family. He visits what seems to be a daughter or daughter-in-law, it’s difficult to tell what she is. While they are talking outside, a plane goes overhead, causing Nakajima to pause in his conversaton. Then another plane passes. The young woman not only ignores it, she is so used to the plane that it doesn’t exist for her.

Are we all waiting for Nakajima’s flashback to the war years? I was.

Another plane goes zipping overhead, there is a bright flash of light and Nakajima dives to the side of the room, cowering, in a “flashback”, for there has been no flash of light. Bombs go off. He hears people screaming. No, it’s his grandchild who is screaming as his grandfather cowers over her. And it wasn’t bombs after all. Wasn’t the bomb dropping. It was a thunderstorm. It pours rain.

I suffered through the whole film wondering exactly who was who. The bad and spare translation gave no clue for the most part, but later in the film when it was mentioned that Nakajima had one daughter and two sons, one by a former marriage, I was made even more perplexed (note: going through the movie again I see I’d gotten this wrong, that it said he had two wives and three children to support, one by a former marriage). “The Films of Kurosawa” supplies a synopsis and through it I learned that some of these women were not daughters but mistresses. This woman who was with Nakajima in the above scene was revealed to be a mistress, the infant I’d imagined to be a grandchild was instead Nakajima’s own child, and a man hanging about–who in a later scene we are informed is a “son-in-law” (which heightened the confusion over their being one daughter) is this woman’s father! There, if you ever rent this film you now know.

Back to Dr. Harada who is on the phone. He is told that the clients have ignored the court. “His family said they couldn’t wait.”

An express mail arrives for Mr. Chung (Nakajima). He enters his household, enraged, his wife stepping between he and his children to try to bar them from his anger and prevent an altercation. He storms off and she reads the mail he’s handed her. She sinks to the ground.

Now they are back in court and a son is protesting his dad’s plan isn’t thorough. Nakajima argues that they may not have the money for the farm but the farm lord wants to go home so they can barter with him. The son says this is illegal but the court disagrees, that the law has nothing to say about it. A lot of garbled translation follows.

Dr. Harada leans forward. He suggests the family follow the dad’s plan, that he doesn’t think it’s bad to migrate, that many people want to go to Basil. A son begs him to reconsider, that they are satisfied with the current situation and don’t wont to leave their workshop. Nakajima protests the workshop is in his blood as well and it’s difficult for him to leave it but still insists on migrating.

“You can’t see the danger,” he says.

The son replies, “Dad, fate is not under control. Everyone will die. What radiation? Can we care?”

“I accept the concept of death but I don’t want to be murdered,” Nakajima says. And everyone falls silent.

Nakajima argues his family is his responsibility. A son responds his dad his selfish and inconsiderate, that he ought to go to Basil alone.

Nakajima attacks him, striking him.

Oh, it is still beastly hot outside. Apparently back at the workshop a woman cools some men off with a sprinkler and they dance in the water.

Back at the court, the children are in the hall outside wondering where their father is. The son who had said his father was selfish says to just let him go, then their problems would be over. Nakajima enters with cold soda pop for everyone, each glass bottle already opened and carrying a straw. The family exchanges guilty looks.

Nakajima is Kurosawa’s Godzilla, this film released a year before Godzilla. Or rather he is the Godzilla that in later sequels vacillates between being savior and monster. In the first film Godzilla seems to be The Bomb itself, arousing archaic horror. Here Nakajima-Godzilla is supplied the added dimension of being Japan’s response to The Bomb and the later nuclear tests (which Godzilla followed), the insecurity and fears. How to continue to live life as normal, as if there is a future? Are those who do so preposterously ignroing imminent ruin? Nakajima wants to save his family by taking them to South America which is to him paradise, he imagining it exempt from the terrors of radiation and the prospect of war. Is he insane? If his family did migrate and there was war and South America was a safe island, then he would become a hero. But the family is Japanese, they want to remain in Japan. Just as the wealthy farmer in South America is eager to return to Japan. That’s certainly not to be overlooked, that Nakajima is desperate to take over the South American farm of a Japanese whose dream is returning to his home.

Back to the court room where the magistrates sit deliberating. It looks like the court is leaning in favor of an injunction. Dr. Harada points out Nakajima is afraid of radiation–he doesn’t see him as irrational, Nakajima has stirred to the surface his own concerns. Nakajima’s family says he is abnormal, that the doctors may say he is ok but that “his words are abnormal”.

“We feel uncomfortable to the bombs. I believe you have the same feeling,” the dentist argues. “But we are unlike Chung who is worried too much. No underneath house is built. And no migration to Basil. It’s not difficult to understand his feeling. Everyone is different. How can we say easily that he is wrong?”

Dr. Harada’s fellow magistrates argue that Nakajima’s family members have their own views, their own rights. Dr. Harada responds that any decision to deny the father’s use of his assets is childish, that Chung’s words have meaning. “We even don’t understand his family. Only let Chung suffer the fierce. This is the worries to radiation. Have we considered other reasons? Why can’t we find the root of fierce?”

They call Nakajima in to talk to him alone.

He says he wants to leave the disgusting radiation, that it is useless to be killed by it. “Only chicks use the Emu policy. Sons are a good example.”

Which is what the deepest fears of everyone are, that they may turn out to be ostriches sticking their heads in the sand with their insistence upon continuing life as normal.

Nakajima leaves the room and the court again wonders at the judgment they should make. Apparently they decide upon an injuction.

Now Dr. Harada in his office, suffering the heat in his t-shirt, late at night; he’s reading a book with the picture of an atomic bomb explosion on the front, “Death Ashes.” His son asks him why won’t he change and his father replies, “You read it in the viewpoint of a Japanese, it may cause a trend to retreat.”

What’s that mean? Well, I know from reading “The Films of Kurosawa” that instead Dr. Harada has said something to the effect of if the birds and animals could read this book then they would be promptly fleeing Japan.

Now a countryside scene. A car with a “Hotel” flag. Nakajima emerges with the farmer. “The dream of 30 years comes true.” They stand in sight of Mt. Fuji with a third man.

(Mangled conversation.)

The Farmer: I also want to stay here. Do you really want to sell the farm? You really want to buy this land?

Nakajima: How much for this hill.

Farmer: Here is about ten yards.

Third man: Equal to twenty small towns.

Nakajima: How much.

Third man: 8.2 million.

Farmer: Can buy 4000 yards in Basil.

Nakajima: Any deposit?

1.5 million.

You’re probably smarter than I am because I was totally confused, then realized, oh, this is the barter that the son had referred to as being illegal. Nakajima is unable to purchase the South American farm outright at its given value, so instead he will purchase for the Farmer this land that is within sight of the national symbol of Mount Fuji. And though the volcano slumbers and is a national symbol, calling to mind the beauty of Japan, it certainly also represents The Bomb, because, as with Godzilla, there is always the possibility a volcano will reawaken with horrifying cataclysmic swiftness. The farmer is so confident and eager to return to Japan that he has no qualms of situating in site of Mt. Fuji, in the path of the radiation from nuclear tests.

Back home the family is apparently changing locks on the safe and now discover that their father has purchased the land. 1.2 million. A sister says something a brother doesn’t like and he slaps her, she slaps him and he chases her outside striking her.

Nakajima visits the yougest son who lives in the hovel. He is youth for whom the present is what matters, dressed in jazzy pants. He turns up his jazz music rather than listening to his father.

Nakajima goes around asking to borrow money (which will I guess pay the remainder of the deposit), finally going to what the film will eventually identify as his daughter (when she is his mistress). They had received a check for 200,000 but the husband (really her father) says he has spent it all. They argue! Everyone is arguing, always bitterly and explosively arguing. The woman searches for the money and finds only a little. She pulls out a nest egg she has kept to give to Nakajima. Nakajima says it’s useless, not enough. She urges him to take it, arguing with him to take it, and he does.

Quite a different scene when one knows that he hasn’t gone to a daughter to borrow money, but to his mistress the mother of his infant daughter.

Nakajima meets with the farmer. The farmer suddenly rises and shakes Nakajima’s hand vigorously, telling him he is a good, trustworthy man. He’s saying he can’t wait, that he plans to go back to South America, and there he will wait for Nakajima’s reply. He invites Nakajima to come and visit the farm. He offers the story that, “When my dad said to migrate to Basil I objected,” but then there was then a fire and the home burned. He returns the 1.2 million to Nakajima and tells him to give the money back to his children and discuss things with them peacefully.

Nakajima returns the money to his children. One of the brothers says his father can’t have the money, that the assets can’t be used, they’re frozen by the court. A sister yells and throws a fan at the brother, the brother yells and throws the fan back. The father attacks his son for hitting the sister and the father and son now proceed to hit each other while everyone yells and there’s great commotion. All the fighting is getting kind of getting comical, though it shouldn’t be, and is where the roots of this as a satire show through, the volatility of this family, scenes of anxiety always bursting into full-blown battle.

Shot of a plane taking off. It’s the farmer leaving and the father seeing him off.

Dr. Harada is on a streetcar reading a newspaper. He looks and sees the father is also on the same car, looking distressed, close to emotional and physical ruin. The dentist goes to talk to him but the father appears disoriented and won’t respond, either that or he is embarrassed that he’d lost the lawsuit. It must be the latter as he stands and turns his back on the dentist. When he disembarks, Dr. Harada follows. Dr. Harada apologizes for what has happened but Nakajima tells him to not waste his time, walking away. Then Nakajima returns and tells Dr. Harada he’s not scared of any radiation or hydrogen bombs. “But you open your eyes to see clearly. I am now not feeling good. All because of you. You made me like a bird in a cage. Just to think about the radiation. Wait until die. And feeling worser and worser. But I can’t do anything. It’s the most painful in life.” He shuffles off.

Dr. Harada speaks to one of the other members of the court who says the judgment was disappointing but did they have any other choice? That if he wasn’t a magistrate he would think about it from Nakajima’s viewpoint as well (so he seems to be saying). “He can’t avoid the tragedy, no one is to blame, since there are radiation problems, and he is more sensitive than the others. In fact that man is very careful. This time he is stuck.”

Now to Nakajima at the house of his mistress (here, his daughter), holding his infant daughter (here, his grandchild), terribly distressed, cuddling the child protectively. The sound of wind surrounds, then leaves. The son-in-law enters (actually the mistress’ father). A storm is brewing. Pages of a book flap in the wind. “This boring weather persists a while,” the son-in-law says. “The report says because of the hydrogen bomb experiment. Father-in-law should know about it,” he laughs, “you should know better about the effects of radiation. Better to be in USA and Russia. The radiation ashes come to Japan. Because of the weather, radiation be’d gathered in Japan. We are the people. Don’t know what to become. Hair drops. Bone deteriorates,” he laughs, drunk. “Then all bad luck. We saw the nuclear bomb before. It’s cruel to watch. Have you seen? A little child…”

“Shut up!” Nakajima says.

OK, what had the mistress’ father actually said?

“Isn’t the weather strange? The newspapers say it is because of the H-bomb tests. Of course you know a lot more about this than I do, but they say that the radioactivity is bound to reach Japan no matter where the bomb itself explodes. I’m no scientist, mind you, but it’s something about some atmospheric currents and Japan is in some sort of valley–and anyway all the radioactivity is bound to flow down on us. Wonder what will happen. Our hair will fall out, I guess, and then our bones will get rotten, I hear. Well, it’s not very nice to think about it, is it? Just the other day I saw in a magazine something about Hiroshima. It was a pretty gruesome sight–they had pictures too, but I imagine you already saw it. Anyway, they had a picture of a baby–it was just about this big and–”

The son-in-law (mistress’ father) says it’s useless to worry if you’re broke. “In fact you are fortunate. It’s not bad to stop you using your assets. Now you have a quiet life.”

It thunders and Nakajima, agitated, looks down at the infant he is rocking.

The daughter (mistress) enters and thanks Nakajima for rocking the child to sleep and would take the child from him, but he won’t release the infant, clutching tight. Then he does. He goes in and grabs up the newspaper to look at the picture of the bomb test.

“Murderer! Japan has become a radiation country!”

Now Nakajima gathers his family together. For once they are sitting peacefully, quietly. Tea is passed around. Nakajima bows to them and addresses them, begging them all to go with him to Basil. “Maybe I am mad. But the radiation pollution is close. Don’t know when the war comes. In war time no one can go. Take the chance now. Can’t let the children die,” he cries pointing to the infant. “Can’t let the radiation kill our children. It doesn’t matter me. It’s useless if you don’t care. But think for the children. I have thought this way. But I also love you. How can I leave you? Please follow me. A letter from Basil. They are kind to invite. Invite us to get our living rights.” He continues to entreat his family to go with him, then his wife does as well, begging the family to go to Basil, that he is thinking of them. But none of the children are replying, none are having anything to do with it.

Finally, overcome with the sight of her father prostrating himself and begging, a daughter gets up and goes to him and says she will follow him.

Nakajima collapses.

In the next scene a departing doctor says Nakajima is only tired, that he needs sleep and rest.

The family talks about getting Nakajima to make a will in case he dies.

The mistress (which the translation would have us believe is a daughter) sits with Nakajima’s daughter and primary wife. The daughter pulls out a family photo album and shows the mistress pictures of when the family was very happy at the beach the year before, photos of celebration. The mother says they were too happy, that one must be careful not to be too happy for look at them now.

In the photos, everyone smiling, they were playing tug-of-war.

Nakajima sleeps restlessly. He opens his eyes and hears the children discussing what to do. What we’ve got for a translation of it gives no illumination as to their plans but it seems perhaps at least some are thinking of acting illegally and selling the foundry before their father can totally ruin it and taking control of the money.

In the next scene it’s daylight, Dr. Harada is looking for Nakajima’s workshop and is told it’s really bad. There’s smoke. Fire trucks. The workshop has burned. There is nothing left but steel framing, bringing to mind photos of Hiroshima that are all rubble and twisted metal. The workers apologize, believing they must have accidentally caused the blaze, but Nakajima reveals that he did it, rather than have them take the blame. Because his children wouldn’t leave the workshop he destroyed it so they would go to Basil with him. He insists they can rebuild in Basil.

“So you don’t care about our lives?” the workers ask. What are they to do?

Which is a further terrible weight upon Nakajima, the idea he has ruined their lives, left them jobless. So he entreats them also to go to Basil with him, saying it is all his fault. “I must save everyone. Please migrate with us. You go with us.”

But with what money?

When told that they don’t trust the Basil Man, Nakajima desperately concedes they can live anywhere if they are hard working, even in the Amazon.

“There is no absolutely safe place on the earth,” is the reply. “400 tons of hydrogen bombs can destroy the world. There are not just 400 tons in the world!”

This should be an exciting, heart-wrenching scene, but something is wrong here. You can feel it in the acting, the camera work, a certain confusing lethargy and weight has entered. What is it? Well, as it turns out, the composer who had inspired the film, who had been ill with tuberculosis, had suddenly died at this time. I guess Kurosawa shot this film in part linearly, following the story line, for he states that the sudden loss of his friend took a great deal out of him, so that he felt he could hardly continue with the film. And some of it shows here.

The police arrive.

Next. Nakajima is in jail. The other prisoners laugh that he didn’t commit arson for the compensation, that he instead was crazy enough to burn his workshop out of fear of the bomb and a desire to save his family. Nakajima is now catatonic, unresponsive.

The family is seen leaving what must be an asylum. Dr. Harada is coming to visit. He tells the family the judgment was a bad one. The son-in-law protests this is the best for everyone.

Dr. Harada speaks with the doctor who says every mad man is the same, but with this patient it is different, that he makes him feel uncomfortable, despite the fact he’s mad. “Or we are really the mad man.”

Dr. Harada visits with Nakajima who at first seems calm, at peace at last. Then he looks out the window and sees the sun. He exclaims the planet is burning and everyone must leave it. The earth is on fire, destroyed.

Leaving, Dr. Harada passes the mistress and infant who are now coming to visit Nakajima. Neither says a thing to each other as they don’t know each other. Dr. Harada has had no dealings with her. As he leaves, shoulders bowed, this man who had prided himself on being a negotiator, settling disagreements, she timidly ascends the stairs bringing Nakajima’s youngest daughter to see him in the asylum.

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The 1967 NY Times’ Review for “Record of a Living Being” was less thank lukewarm.

A ‘55 Kurosawa:’I Live in Fear’ Is at the 5th Avenue Cinema

By BOSLEY CROWTHER
Published: January 26, 1967

“I LIVE IN FEAR” merits attention in the retrospective series of Akira Kurosawa films that Thomas Brandon is presenting at the Fifth Avenue Cinema only because it is finally having its first commercial theatrical showing in New York, and that for an understandable reason. It is one of the weakest of the great Japanese director’s works. It was made in 1955 and was shown here at the Museum of Modern Art in 1963.

Aiming, it seems, to tell a story of an aging man’s fears of the hydrogen bomb and his consequent obsessive endeavors to get his family to move with him to a farm in Brazil, it dwindles off into a talky, tedious recounting of the family’s bickering with the old man, who is obviously a crank at the beginning and is totally mad at the end.

Family quarrels are usually painful, but this one is especially so because the family is generally unappealing and the old man is a cantankerous bore. As played by Toshiro Mifune, with his back bent and a mean scowl on his face, he is simply a pig-headed nuisance whose only thought for confronting a peril is to flee.

I feel sure that Mr. Kurosawa could have come up with a more constructive thought on how people should use their energies to pacifistic purpose than the negative one he gives us here. Quarreling and going mad suggest nothing except cynicism and despair. And they are certainly not very stimulating.

So much for “I Live in Fear.”

Their view of “Record of a Living Being” is entirely different from mine but then I’m confused that the reviewer was looking for a film that gave “constructive thought” toward pacifistic endeavor and was unable to accept the happy tug-of-war family becoming the quarreling family pulled apart at the seams by Nakajima’s desperation. What constituted their “lives” after all? Obviously more than preservation of self, those “lives” needed the context of their familiar work and social situations. What does catastrophe do but threaten to tear loose from these securities which define the self? And here The Bomb had birthed another Bomb in the Godzilla-Nakajima desiring to uproot everyone in order to save them. Finally burning down his own factory. As far as I’m concerned it’s a well-constructed story for which there was going to be no answer, for the question wasn’t one to be appeased by living “pro-actively” (a phrase that, if you can believe it, was used once in the transalation). The film was not dealing only with the question of “What do we do about the bomb?” It has to do with a catastrophic loss of security in the present and future, what happens when confidence in order is obliterated.

Hollywood was busy in the 50s making sci-fi films in which the quest for space was on, Americans rooting for rockets that would save them from an Earth destined for some sort of perilous extinction. I rather look at this as being Kurosawa’s response.

Today we attempt to get H.o.p. to let us work on his computer. We are likely to fail though he is aware his is out of memory and needs to be upgraded and get a new video card. Oh, Marty walks in and says he’s paying H.o.p. to come with him to the studio to help him clean up. While they’re gone, I can start work on it. Oh wait, now H.o.p. says to go ahead and work on his computer, that he’s ready.

We did synonyms, antonyms, prefixes and suffixes this week. That went well.

Not so well went science yesterday, which he loves. A book had suggested using a styrofoam ball and lamp to discuss the tilt of the earth and why we have seasons. We already had from puppet making a styrofoam ball with a stick stuck through it. I marked north and south poles and an equator and pulled out a lamp and proceeded with explanations. H.o.p. wanted to make a solar eclipse and I should have gone with the change and played out the solar ecilpse. Instead I said OK enough of the solar eclipse, we can do that later and proceeded with talking about earth’s tilt. H.o.p. was thinking about solar eclipses and snow monsters and the Lego castle he wants to build for the snow monster he wants to eventually buy and the gong that he wants to buy because now he’s decided he must have a gong. When I asked him questions about the seasons afterwards, he had absorbed nothing and H.o.p. hates to get things wrong. Not all things but some things. He doesn’t mind, peculiarly, doing bad animation, he understands it is learning process. But he hates getting other things wrong.

The book illustration we were using for teaching part of this was pretty bad and that didn’t help. It was lame. It even confused me a bit at first. If you’re trying to show someone who learns visually why the poles experience unending night in their respective winters, and unending day in their respecting summers, they didn’t show it very well. And he wasn’t getting the idea from the styrofoam ball. I really should have gone with the eclipse.

H.o.p. disappeared under the table, pouting over his wrong answers. You can tell him a thousand times that wrong answers are part of the path to getting right ones and it’s all right and he still doesn’t appreciate the concept–unless, y’know, it has anything to do with art.

I got a different idea for how to demonstrate the reason for seasons and H.o.p., beginning to climb out from under the table, clunked his head on it.

He was tired. That was a problem, too.

The table of course was at fault. The table had hit him. “Get rid of that table!” We pretty quickly got that out of the way and the table was once again his friend and endearing.

He didn’t like mom’s next idea for discussing the seasons. I was going to be the sun (holding lamp) and he was going to do the earth thing. He didn’t like that and I don’t blame him because what seemed initially to me like a good idea, I realized was probably about as lame as the styrofoam ball and lamp. “I don’t want to be a big planet.” Then he complained about me being the sun and how the lamp was shining in his eyes. Fair enough, I’d complained earlier when he had shone the lamp in my eyes.

I should have left it at that. He was too tired. But I was perversely determined. I dug out the online Encyclopedia Britannica. It was useless! I went searching online and found more lame illustrations. I know there are good ones out there, I just wasn’t coming across them.

Drama ensued, I forget over exactly what but it started with the tilting earth, which was now his enemy.

We ended up reading stories instead and he got out of his mood.

We went through Netflix and chose like a hundred gazillion “fun” (won’t know until we see them) educational films that he wants to see. There’s two years worth of viewing in the queue. Longer maybe since we’re ending up keeping the films a week before we send them back in.

“I told you it would take me an hour ro clean up,” H.o.p. comes in fussing from cleaning up two big bins of toys he’d dumped all over the living room.

“It didn’t take you an hour, it took you ten minutes.”

OK, finally I can start work on H.o.p.’s computer. I’ve got dozens of his little animations to pull off of it that he did before his computer got funky. Thousands of photos to go through with him that he took for stop-animation. He’s still not taking enough photos and gets frustrated when putting the things together. Oh well, he’s not ready for me to work on his computer yet. He opened his animation program and decided he wasn’t done with one of the animations and has started working on it again.

For all things Kurosawa, visit the Akira Kurosawa News and Information website maintained by Vili Maunula. I have been wandering through looking at some of the paintings Kurosawa did for “Ran”, “Kagemusha” and “Dreams”.

Success! Well, something of note accomplished this week. Got H.o.p.’s new-old (my old one) computer up and running and pretty much all spic and span ready for him. Powerful enough (for now) for what he’s doing. Kind of. Maybe. We’ll see.

Poor kid needs a new monitor. His is making click click click sounds now (noticed that yesterday) and see today that the browser page is *totally* burned in on the freaking thing. It’s a very old monitor and the screen is now a light brown instead of a bright white. Gack. If we got him a cheap flat panel he’d go nuts over it. Later….

To prep for this had to download everything off the old machine and will load it back on before he gets up. And I had to go through and film about 150 small animations he’d made on his old animation program. Took me hours to do it because the user interface on the animation program is insanely unfriendly. I know the last batch I loaded up numbered 72 so am assuming the first batch was around the same number.

Am purchasing Flipbook Lite for H.o.p. tonight so that when he gets up in the morning it will be there on his computer, ready to use. It is a very lite program with one foreground layer, one background layer and holds up to 300 frames. It should be enough for an 8-year-old though…

If we can get his computer online. For some reason it’s not going online.

There, now it’s online. About 4 am and it’s online and I’m getting ready to download his animation software.

Got it downloaded (they could have provided a correct download address) and trying to install it.

We’ve never had an email client set up for H.o.p. on his machine. So we just set it up and it will not send out for him. There’s something screwy going on there. So will use online email. I’m gonna make myself some cocoa. And we continue to have problems. His email client won’t work at all now. Was working for incoming mail then wasn’t working for outgoing and is not working for incoming now. Damn.

Hmmm….need the registration number for the Flipbook, not the invoice. OK, got the registration number and am trying to register it, have tried to register it 3 times but it’s not working. Registration is not working. I keep trying to register and it won’t register. I keep sending the email to the appropriate place and am getting no response.

So, screw it. H.o.p. will not have the animation program on his computer in the morning! Damn. So much for that. And it’s 5 AM.

I remembered my cocoa and got it out of the microwave and am now at least trying to use the demo version of Flipbook, which H.o.p. will not want to do as in playback mode it’s covered by FLIPBOOK copyright etc. This program is not as easy as I hoped it would be. I’m going to have to go through the pains of learning it myself first, in depth, and then try to teach him.

Ugh.

So mommy’s going to have to learn how to do computer cell animation. Just what I always wanted to spend time doing (not). And need to contact Flipbook for the registration number and as it’s Labor Day weekend I bet you anything I won’t hear back from them until Tuesday. Oh well.

When ordering some extra math books, I’d seen that Singapore Math had a 3rd-4th grade math games CD, Vroot vroom. I went ahead and got it though it was expensive as hell, $31.50. I figured anything anything anything that might make numbers a little more interesting to H.o.p. was worth a try.

He likes it.

Got it in yesterday and he’s been trying it out today. If anyone’s looking for a review on the program I don’t have one to offer as I’ve not had an opportunity to look it thoroughly over and see what it offers. But I can tell you that my 8-year-old thinks it’s great. He loves the characters (aliens). He just finished doing a game in which he went through a several step process to compile information for a bar graph and make it, then when they offered the option to print it out he was eager to do so (but his printer wouldn’t print as it’s out of ink).

“Great game!” he said.

“You like it?”

“I don’t like it, I *love* it!” he replied.

I can’t begin to tell you if it’s worth $31.50. What I can tell you is that H.o.p.’s played with it a while and when he gets things wrong he’s not complaining or feeling defeated. He’s not complaining if he doesn’t know something; the game environment is inviting enough that he’s interested in meeting the challenge. He likes the art work (which is important to him). And the accompanying music and sound effects aren’t distracting and don’t me drive me bonkers. And when talking about the CD H.o.p. said the word “math” without a scowl, without hesitation, he didn’t gag, he said it like math was an interesting game and that’s a first. Ever. What I’m interested in is if it will help change his attitude toward math in general, outside the environment of the game. If it helps with that then it’s certainly worth the money.

Another math computer game program I’d read about was “Quarter Mile Math”, but the art looks uninviting, and from what I can tell it involves choosing a car or horse as your game token and advancing through a race by answering flashcard problems. It’s all drill work. H.o.p. doesn’t care about horses or cars and doesn’t want to look at anything resembling a flash card.

H.o.p. hates drills.

H.o.p. likes Martians though.

The “Quarter Mile Math” CDs are $40 each so it seems the Singapore “Vroot Vroom” is competitively priced for this kind of thing.

It’s gotten impossible to get packages here through USPS. And Federal Express isn’t much better.

We’ve had a number of packages to our home that sat down at the Post Office for I don’t know how long with our not even being notified they were there and we were lucky we ever got them. A couple of times I have called a company and been told they were sent out a package a long time before and we’ve checked at the PO and have found the packages have been sitting down there forever and along with those packages they would haul out others that had been sitting down there forever as well. Another package didn’t reach us for two months. Has gotten worse and worse since last winter. So I started having packages instead delivered to the studio and that has been working out fine. Until today. Amazon emails to tell me a big package of books I’d ordered for H.o.p. has returned to them and gone back into inventory because for some reason it was undeliverable to the studio.

This sucketh.

I shall have to order them again.

I can’t rely on getting packages either here at home or at the studio, it seems. USPS, I am bitter.

Heretik does a post today on an LA Times article on the clean-up at Hanford which is 20 years behind schedule now. And gives a link to my Remixing the Hanford Declassifed Project. Thank you Heretik.

The LA Times reports today:

There is also an urgency to the mission, given the risk that radioactive waste will someday reach the Columbia River, the largest river in the West. About 1 million gallons of the waste has already leaked into the ground at Hanford, though government experts are confident the rate of leakage has slowed or stopped.

Government hydrologists say they have no evidence that any leaked sludge has reached the water table 250 feet below ground, and they cannot calculate when — or whether — the radioactivity will reach the Columbia River.

Such assurances are rejected by some outside experts, including geotechnical engineer John Brodeur, who conducted a comprehensive study of the tanks in the late 1990s for the Energy Department.

“Some of the ground under the tanks is screaming hot,” said Brodeur. “The groundwater is already contaminated.”

Back in April the governor of Washington State, Christine Gregoiire, told CBS news:

Anderson says that the leaking tanks have been stabilized and that there’s virtually no chance of further seepage. But Christine Gregoire, the governor of Washington State, who has worked on this issue from the beginning, doesn’t believe that for one minute.

“Let me tell you the story. 1989: They told me there was zero chance that there would be any leakage and ground water contamination. Sixteen years later, we have confirmed 67 leakers, groundwater contamination. I told them then, ‘Gravity works like this.’ And I’ll tell them again today: gravity means we are very vulnerable to the groundwater contamination and a plume that we now have moving towards the Columbia River, which is the lifeline of our Pacific Northwest,” Gov. Gregoire says.

Asked what she meant by a “plume,” the governor said, “We’ve got an area that is contaminated in the groundwater and is migrating towards the Columbia River. And if it gets there, Lesley, we have an absolute disaster on our hands.”

She’s worried about a move in Congress to cut the budget for the Hanford clean-up.

Source: Read more

What’s also disquieting is that they’re twenty years behind on a plant that they’re not confident won’t become a white elephant in the desert, as they’re not sure the thing will even work.

The separation occurs in a huge pretreatment plant, which by itself will cover the size of four football fields and reach 12 stories high. For safety, the concrete walls are 4 feet thick. The separate processes use both fine metal filters and two chemical processes, which have never been tested together on a large scale.

“They are taking a real risk the thing won’t work and they will have a $11.5-billion white elephant sitting in the desert,” said Tom Carpenter, nuclear oversight program director at the Government Accountability Project, a Washington, D.C., watchdog group.

Amid growing congressional concerns about Hanford’s technology, Bechtel assembled a team of the top nuclear experts in the nation.

In a March report, they cited a number of defects that would have to be fixed for the plant to work. They said one of the two chemical processes was “undemonstrated” and the other “will not provide acceptable performance.” The whole pretreatment facility “will be difficult to reliably operate.”

The team of outside experts also raised concerns with the vitrification processes. Once the waste streams are separated, they are sent to two different final treatment plants for vitrification. The melters in the low-level plant could wear out or fail prematurely, while the piping in the high-level plant could get plugged up, they said.

The report raised the prospect that the Hanford treatment plant might wear out before all the waste was treated, particularly if it could not operate reliably and avoid shutdowns.

The plant is designed to turn out 6 metric tons of vitrified high-level waste per day and 30 tons of low-level waste. If it can do that, it will complete the job 40 years after starting up, or 2059. If the job lasts longer than that, the plant could wear out first.

Rispoli, the Energy Department environmental chief, believes the outside assessment shows that the plant will work. All the Energy Department has to do is solve the problems identified in the report, he said.

Source: Read more

We are eclectic homeschoolers, incorporating the traditional as it serves. Acknowledging that H.o.p. is ever and always learning we still set the first weekday after Labor Day as when our “schooling year” starts, which gives me the impetus to make August a month for gathering materials. We’ve been prepping the past couple of weeks, getting in gear for fuller immersion.

So today was H.o.p.’s first day of the new school year and he was pleased with how things went. The glitches were mainly technical. We are for some reason having technical problems on his new-old computer. It is having terrible problems accessing a site we rely on for language and math. First it wouldn’t let us log in either in Firefox or IE. I disabled Norton privacy and it would let us in in IE only but wouldn’t show images. I went in and added the website in the advanced area in Norton that should allow us all access to it, and cut back on the privacy setting. We could not access it at all. I went back and disabled Norton privacy and now we couldn’t access it in IE but could access it in Firefox in their available troubleshooting mode. But then when we closed out and tried to return later it said our session was over and wouldn’t let us back in. That was a pain. Anyway, we employed every thing that I knew to do and every suggestion their website had to offer for trouble-shooting and things remain problematic. It’s confusing as he’s using my old computer and I never had any trouble and he never had any trouble on his old computer.

The day started with homophones and ended with pleiosaurs and looking up Loch Ness once again because H.o.p.’s primary interest is in all things “Monsters!”

Whatever subject I introduce to him, the immediate response is, “Are there monsters?!”

Today I told him that the modern world is very unimaginative in its understanding of monsters and if he will but follow my bread crumbs through various seemingly unrelated topics he will find that so-called monsters abound.

As a footnote, I wonder why I’m using Wikipedia much more than my subscription to Encyclopedia Britannica. I wonder why they’re not making better use of images and interactive features.

Below is a little-bitty sort-of animation H.o.p. did at the beginning of the summer. He is still not producing enough frames for anything. Because he didn’t have enough frames I helped him with fading inbetween shots to sort of make up for it.

This basically shows he knows from where plants come. From the ground. From seeds.

You’ve got to wonder about people who post a number of comments to a blog in a short space of time, making some argument for a politician you’ve said something negative about, and in those comments they use a different name and email address, but each comment is branded by the same IP address. Were Bob, Sally, Dick and Jane all huddled around the same computer waiting to get their piece in? I somehow don’t think so. If you’re wondering where your comments have gone to, I flushed them. I’ve no use for trolls at all.

Yesterday, for us, started with idioms and ended with the the first part of the BBC docmentary “Walking with Cavemen” (British version, not the American with some cuts and Alec Baldwin narrating, which I read is disappointing), our current Netflix pic.

I’m lovin’ it.

I don’t care what may be wrong about it. Don’t much care how some of the depictions of Homo Sapien Sapiens’ ancestors and rivals may not be quite right, prosthetics and make-up only able to do so much, and don’t care about all the speculation or what’s left out. Don’t care what may have been learned in the past few years that will catapult some anthropologists to gang heads and howl in despair over the witlessness of people such as me who say, “I don’t care, I love it.” What they’ve actually accomplished best in this show is relating, “Things change, in small ways and big ways, and everything that changes then causes something else to change.” Sometimes in a matter of a few seconds they must communicate the above and beautifully manage it through a series of fast forwards showing changes in climate and environments then narrowing down to particulars, and the combination of artistry and writing makes it work, makes it real, lifts the usually trudging facts off textbook pages and converts them into a suspenseful story. No, I don’t need to be spoonfed but it’s nice to have as a supplement, especially with a child for whom it can be a good encouragement for learning more. The drama of they’ve managed to invest in thesfast forwards that slam dunk into different stages in the evolutionary process helps with comprehending time, time, time and the complexity of the process.

I’ve read complaints that the show is too adult for children as it doesn’t leave out sexuality and there’s oh yeah nudity and violence. If those complaints apply to Episdoe 1 of the DVD, they amount to, “Look, mom nurses infant! Look, biped romance with grooming rituals! Very hairy bipeds embracing and nuzzling!” What’s traumatic and disturbing about it? And, yes, our ancestors are shown nude walking about the savannah but it works, folks, it works. These people did a great job of stepping around modern barriers that would make it not work.

At one point where they were talking about dominant males and females and groupings and regroupings and demonstrating them via a story line, and weren’t ignoring the subject of sex, H.o.p. said, “I don’t get what they’re talking about, this isn’t making sense to me.” So the DVD was put on pause and some rephrasing of things was in order.

“Look, a cute baby!” H.o.p. said of the nursing infant child, until he got a closer look and had to think about it again, just how cute the infant may or may not be. “They look perferctly normal to each other,” I told him and that took care of that.

When the impulsive wannabe leader of a troupe made off with said baby, dangling it by its leg, I tucked my head between my arms and said, “Oh, no! I hope it’s going to be all right!” To which H.o.p. replied, “Mom, they’re just actors with a doll.”

When the mighty croc drug a leader of a troupe under the water, blood staining the screen, there’s really no gore, nothing much is show, it’s left to the imagination. H.o.p., aghast, said, “Why did it do that? What’s happening?” I explained that this is what crocs will do. “But they don’t mean to do it, do they?” H.o.p. said. “They don’t really mean to attack people do they? It’s an accident and they’re looking for something else?” And we had a talk about that.

So impressed was he with some scenes that he rewound several times to review.

I thought the acting was great. I think the cinematography and editing is great. If it’s considered dumbing down the subject, I appear to fit the target audience.

Actually, I’m impressed that though I’m aware much is pure speculation, I think the show is great. My eyebrows were raised several times as to depictions of appearance (most frequently with the seeming eventual preponderance of caucasoids), and raised several times more (most frequently in connection with Homo habilis’ impeccably styled, muttonchop sideburns) but the acting was so good and the prosthetics and mechanicals so good that the raised eyebrow didn’t intrude much. Because we’ve got real actors (I read highly trained actors, and it shows) there are some problems with body proportions but the quality of the acting overweighs the problem at least for me.

I’d say that I was probably more impressed than H.o.p., except he stayed stuck to the futon throughout and kept up a running stream of questions and comments.

Anyway, here we are again today watching “Walking with Cavemen” after some strenuous reading and discussion on trying to distinguish between fact and opinion and working with expanded number forms (which we’ve been doing all week). Much fun. Lots to talk about. H.o.p. likes! This Netflix subscription was a great idea.

Smithsonian can be a great place to visit online with H.o.p., so Friday after a difficult time with math we went to Campfire Stores with George Catlin. H.o.p. liked Peter Matthiesson’s introduction and wanted to listen to it several times, and at his request we listened several times to Peter Nabakov talking about Sacred Geography and we talked about the concept of land ownership and how different cultures can view land–all great with H.o.p., he loves that kind of thing. There’s a good deal available at the site and will take many returns with him to view it all, so today we just looked at three paintings and discussed them (only a portion of Catlin’s catalogue of paintings is up though which means foraging elsewhere for other paintings). That’s all great with H.o.p., talking about the paintings and sacred geography and reading the brief bios and bits of info that go with the paintings. Pull up the art and he talks about what the people are wearing, how they’re decorated, asks to see several times the image of a Blackfoot man in his grizzly bear robe, its head hiding his face, and asks a multitude of questions on that, why have they decorated the bear’s eyes with red, why are the leggings blue, wants to know about the rattle and spear he is holding, wants to know exactly what it means, what is happening.

We didn’t use the book for science. Instead he went to Brain Pop to do their Flash bit from the techology section on television, then the Flash bit on Natural Selection–his choices, he loves loves loves these flash animations and the dollops of information he gets there. Very visual.

He watches the Brainpop flash on extinction and starts conversing on how we need to get rid of certain things to save animals and plants.

He asked to listen to Peter Nabakov again.

Put on Xi-Lin Wang’s2 Pieces for Lu Xun’s Sword Casting, Op. 28, 1993 and there’s immediate focus (which is what we did for music today). He sits. He leans forward and intently listens. He’s recently discovered Chinese music and loves it.

He’s learning to wrestle. When I fiinally said let’s quit the math and come back to it later, H.o.p., already irritated, diverted the anger in another direction and said to me, “No, you’re not going to quit! You’re not going to give up!” He continued to fuss a little but got through the problems.

And he seems to finally be starting to accept what I’ve told him for years, that there are no wrong answers when you’re learning. He’s said it to me several times the past few days. I plan to take big advantage of it.

After some other things, finished the school day going to the BBC companion website for “Walking with Cavemen”, reading there, looking up maps of Olduvai Gorge. H.o.p. memorized some of the skull shapes at the BBC website and went to his desk and drew the below:

He’s very disappointed that we’re going to be sending “Walking with Cavemen” back to Netflix, he likes it so much, but that disappointment was eased somewhat by “The Magic School Bus, Space Adventures” arriving today.

So did Altman’s “California Split”, which I’ve not seen before and am looking forward to viewing.

Dreamhost is having problems again and the blog is slow and now I can’t ftp. They’re shutting down everything for 45 minutes Monday night.

Amazing to me that in a city this size, its main staple theater draws only about 10 children for a 3rd to 5th grade acting class. Millions of people and out of that pool only 10 kids for its Fall class? Well, this time H.o.p. is one of them. Big time fun. He had a blast. Parents not allowed, shuffled out the door to be permitted back in on the last day when there shall be some sort of play performed. Sounds proceed of children running around, laughing, following instructions to do this and that, put your hands on your hips, that kind of thing. H.o.p. tells me that they played at being popcorn and balloons being blown up and popping. Activities, interestingly, that work with controlling energy while giving the kids an opportunity to end up using that energy in a big way. Now I pop! Now I explode!

Next week, from what I hear, some will be actors and some will be directors and the directors will need to find two things nice to say about the way an actor has done something.

Update: I tried out being a piece of popping corn for H.o.p. and according to him I got it all wrong. I reminded him he is to find at least two nice things to say about what I was doing. He said at least I jumped up when I popped. He couldn’t think of a second nice thing to say.

Immediate Altman wall of sound. A poker club with a blazer-uniformed man at a huge blackboard, chalking letters, apart from the sedentary commotion below. Every scene in this film steeped in 70s attire and environment, which is painful, which is revisiting the fake wall paneling America of easy up, easy down, nothing aimed at permanence, just the dollar of the moment and this is no exception. No Las Vegas revelry, looks more like a 70’s steakhouse. Bill (George Segal) enters and passes by Charlie (Elliot Gould) in tan blazer, who’s wandering through the tables, chewing a toothpick. The impression is two people scouting, looking for something, like a team of hawks. They’re so ready for each other you might already assume they’re partners in a con.

The title “California Split” comes up with the sound of cards being shuffled.

“Hello Bill, put you on at five?” the Board Man asks.

Bill is known there. Five must be his normal table. But today he decides to go with Ten.

Charlie has perhaps not been to this club before. He steps into a waiting area and listens to an introductory video of the poker club which shows that poker is no longer the dangerous, dark sport it used to be, that it can be played in full comfort and trust, “And here is the man responsible…” Who is? Mr. Murray Shepherd, almost sounding at first like George Bush Sr. as he speaks, but just for a second. In a perfect corporate film monotone he explains the set-up as the camera returns to Bill, informing the club is there to provide a service. Charlie punctuates the brief description of “Low Draw” poker, with “That’s my baby” and you’re straining to pick up the cheeze bits of sound falling from the ceiling throughout. Our poker shepherd is telling about the Board Man who takes your name and puts your initials on the board, and the Floor Man who puts the games together. Lots of visual and audio information to absorb. There’s not a single “extra” here, everyone alive and spinning in their own world, because (1) the commentary special feature informs that most everyone of the background people in the film were Synanon members rather than actors and were absolutely unflustered by the camera, and that (2) the writer scripted not only for the foreground, the main action, but for the background, so everyone had something to do, they were involved and not just mumbling nothing sounds.

Things look low key, under control, but when Bill sits down next to an elderly woman and smiles at her, she picks up her bag and moves it away from him. How much trust can you have when you’re competing with everyone else for the winning hand?

“CW 10 blind” is called and Charlie, all confidence, swings out into the club as the peculiarly omniscient feeling Mr. Murray Shepherd explains that the club has no financial interest in what’s going on at the tables. You merely rent your chair, your opportunity to be in on the game. The house has no stake.

As the chip girl–a woman with a foot tall pile of 70s curls–hands Charlie his chips, and then Bill (who has also been called to the table), her function too is explained by Mr. Shepherd in his thoroughly business voice. A great intro to the film and the scene. Plays much the same function as the bodiless voice emanating from the loud speaker in “Mash”, from the horn on the campaign van in “Nashville”.

Now, narrow down to the table in question. Many of these players seem to know each other. There’s a guy with greasy hair and mustache, Lew. A blustery no-nonsense woman in red and purple striped blouse sits next to a man in brown plaid sport coat and a checkered shirt. An older fellow. A man with curly black hair in a brown sweater and white shirt. These were mostly real poker players who ad-libbed throughout. Mr. Shepherd talks about the social skills that are an asset in the game, such as good manners (Lew says oh shit and folds) and how no talk is permitted that hasn’t anything to do with the game.

Charlie and Lew are already in conflict. “I didn’t think you were that good” says Charlie to Lew when Lew believes he’s won a hand, and then when Lew stands to take the winnings, Charlie reveals he’s the one with the winning hand. There are more hands, and Charlie, having focused on contender Lew, keeps prodding, psyching him out. When Bill, now dealer, throws Charlie a card a bit too hard and it nearly drops off the side of the table, Charlie catching it, Lew objects. Charlie protests the card never left the table (which it appears to have, briefly). Lew insists it bounced off the floor, which it hadn’t. The Floor Man is called over. No one saw what happened, they just want to get on with the game of winning or losing. Bill says, as dealer, the card was all right. Goaded on by Charlie, Lew continues betting, things getting more heated. Charlie wins the hand with the Joker he’d caught at table’s edge. Lew insists Charlie and Bill are partners and nails Bill on the chin. Bill, who appears somewhat out of place even though one feels as Lew does, that this is a set-up and Bill and Charlie are a team, crawls through the ensuing mayhem and out of the club.

Now a pretty dismal looking nightclub. A hurting Bill sits at the bar. You expect Charlie to enter and for it to be revealed theyr’e a team. GoGo Girls sign on the wall. A sign that reads something Split. Over to the side, a woman is begging her stripper daughter for $30 for some game of chance and here the desperation enters, that there are people who can’t give it up, who are addicted, for whom gambling is their ruin, it’s not all games. Charlie is shown approaching the club from outside. Rene Exotique. Topless girls (yet the one stripper in the club is wearing a top and is instead bottomless). Charlie, seeing Bill, offers to buy him a beer, which Bill at first turns down then accepts, and you realize that Bill hasn’t been sitting here waiting for Charlie, that they’re not a team, not yet. As they drink together they become increasingly boisterous. “Don’t sign, don’t sign!” Charlie tells the stripper when she gets $30 from the bartender and signs for it, then hands it off to her mother on the other side of the room, Lew imperceptibly entering the club in the background dark. Charlie and Bill try to beat each other naming the seven dwarfs (the commentary reveals this was improv) but neither manages. Was Snoopy one? No. Dumbo? No, not part of that cast. They’re well on their way to being good buds when they leave and Bill offers Charlie a ride, who doesn’t have a car. How much of a winner is a dude with no car? Bill’s singing, “What you going to do when the rent comes down?” “You’re a minstrel huh?” Charlie asks. And they’re attacked and robbed by Lew and some of his thugs. Does this feel good, Funny Man, Lew says, delivering a brutal last kick to Charlie. You expected the mugging, felt it was coming, but it still works, partly because you know Bill and Charlie weren’t a team at the time.

Next shot, classic Altman (it’s all classic Altman here) a number of people in bathrobes, various ages, being led into the back of a police station, cop swinging a bag of pot. Barbara enters, there to bail out Bill and Charlie (Barbara is played by Ann Prentiss, Paula Prentiss’ sister, never heard of her, seems mainly to have done 60s and 70s television and one wonders what happened to her after this film because she was great in it–oh, never mind, I see what happened to her, much later on, it ain’t pretty and she’s serving jail time for it, sad and you still have to wonder what happened to her).

Back at Barbara’s place now, talkative Charlie is anointing his bruises with shaving cream, and convinces Bill to let him rub shaving cream on his ribs, that the heat will feel good and ease the pain. They’re comfortable with each other, nearly as comfortable as if they’d been childhood buddies in an opposites attracting complementary friendship, but Bill is still more a witness than participant, on unfamiliar territory. Barbara serves up a breakfast of cold cereal, Lucky Charms for Charlie, Fruit Loops for Bill, sloshing milk around. Bill’s enjoying himself but looks also a bit in awe, this obviously not quite what he’s used to, Charlie telling him how ice cream sellers are desperate and it’s a quick way to pick up $25 for an hour, simply not returning with the ice cream truck. You have to wonder why Bill would be interested in Charlie, whose wins also seem to be balanced with consistent losses. Because he’s so gregarious? Bill is a bit uneasy about the shaving cream and Charlie assures him that it won’t ruin his sweater and no one will tell his mother. Seems perhaps a key to Bill’s personality and why he might be interested in Charlie and stepping off perhaps a too trodden, guarded path.

Charlie obviously makes Bill feel good. He likes the feeling he gets around his new friend, that anything could happen at any second.

A younger, slight woman comes in through the front door and leans against it crying. The “baby” of the house (played by Gwen Welles who also played Suleen Gay in “Nashville”). Barbara sees her into her room which is filled with well-tended plants, Charlie following and querying her on what happened. She’s talking about how she liked the guy, how he gave her a $50 when the deal was for $30, and you realize she’s a prostitute. “He liked you a lot too,” says Charlie, consoling her. Back to Barbara querying Bill on why they were picked up. For drunk and disorderly. Barbara says Charlie’s not too good with cops. Back to Charlie who is however good with Baby, cajoling her, trying to get her into a better humor and ease her pain as well. He tells her about the Big Blue Whale, no nothing to do with wrestling (as she’s supposed), that there are only a couple left in the world and their tongues weigh more than an elephant. “You’re just making it up to make me feel better,” Baby says, mascara staining her face from eye to chin, but she is feeling better. The distraction has worked.

As the birds tweet morning, everyone settles down to sleep. We’re given the impression Barbara, in leopard spot pjs, may be stealing his wallet when she goes in to where Bill is resting on the sofa and reaches her hands under him, but she’s instead looking for the TV Guide. In a rather surreal scene Baby comes back to the dining room in footie pajamas and pours herself a huge bowl of cereal. It’s Over the Rainbow land for Bill, as he looks on. And Altman takes forever with these shots. They’re beautiful. They work because he’s taken the time and the actors exploit that time with the meaningful habitual humdrum off-the-screen life of their characters. One sees in these shots of Baby, in particular, a hint of future Coen Brothers except that Baby and Barbara and Charlie aren’t freaks. The Coen Brothers often, though not always, ice the frames and characters with carnival chaos. These Altman characters are simply what they are and via Bill you’re given an opportunity to see beyond their front door.

Next, Bill is now William Denny the writer and is arriving at his job in a nice 70s decorated building where he works for the magazine “California Inquire”. The boss, a young Jeff Goldblum, asks the receptionist if Bill’s in and what he said when he was told he wanted to speak to him, then enigmatically smiles and that’s the last we see of him, whatever is his story plumping up the set and making it that much livelier. Everything present on the set, with Altman, is intended to invest the film with meaning, giving it landscape.

Bill’s secretary passes through and Bill notes to himself that he thinks he understands Barbara. Which Barbara, for the secretary is named Barbara as well. But you feel he’s talking about the prostitute, and realize he’s going to be someone who’s always trying to measure the people around him, to guess their game, part of his nature as a gambler. He calls Charlie, Barbara answering the phone and there’s the parallel sense of her as Charlie’s secretary as she carries the phone over to him. Bill and Charlie make tentative plans to meet at the race track if Bill can get away from work. “I can’t steal any more time from here.” He’s a thief of sorts.

Charlie rides the bus to the track. A woman in a cloche hat wants to exchange seats from him but Charlie says he can’t sit facing the rear, he never wins a game that way. The lady gets the seat of the woman next to him and starts asking about Egyptian Fem. Charlie tries to talk her out of betting on the horse, Egyptian Fem.

Bill heads to the track, saying he’s going to Chino instead on work-related business. At the track, the woman with the cloche hat asks Charlie again about Egyptian Fem and he says to go ahead and bet on the horse. She notes he has #4 underlined, and thinking he’s now trying to get her to bet on a losing horse (Egyptian Fem) she changes her betting strategy. These betters keep looking to the opposite side. If you say yes then the truth could very well be no. Charlie’s playing the role of the clown in a sense.

So Bill does show up and Charlie and Bill sling back some beers and Bill talks Charlie into betting on Egyptian Fem which is not at all what Bill had planned on doing. He doesn’t see how Fem could possibly win.

Egyptian Fem wins. The woman with the cloche hat harasses Charlie, she feeling she was tricked by him into betting on the other horse when he had, finally, told her to go ahead and bet on Egyptian Fem. Still, he is blamed for her loss, just as Lew blamed Charlie for his loss.

But in Charlie’s company, Bill has won and he’s exhilarated.

Back to Barbara’s place. Barbara and Baby are dressed up, getting ready to go out with a client. Baby, dreamy, fantasizes about getting Italian food. When there’s a knock on the door Barbara tells her “act natural.” It’s instead Bill and Charlie, insistent on celebrating their win with the women. Barbara looks out at some guy behind them and asks who he is, Charlie replying he’s a tenor. This is confusing and I find at DVD Beaver that there are a number of scenes that have been trimmed, including this one. When she had opened the door in the original, Mr. Tenor had been singing Happy Birthdday to her, Charlie and Bill appearing and joining in, Barbara insisting it’s not her birthday.

Charlie informs Baby he saw her that morning in the dining room and sits to play the piano for her, “Erastus Johnson Brown, what you gonna do when the rent comes down”, the same song he was singing when they were mugged in the strip joint parking lot (it’s a curious moment in the film and one of the few I still wonder about as the move from confiding he’d seen her to the piano seems odd). Barbara makes them leave because she and Baby are waiting for Mr. Kramer who will pay them $150 a piece for their company, but Bill and Charlie will not be deterred. They go outside and watch as Mr. Kramer, a transvestite, arrives. It’s Christmas time. There are Christmas lights outside. Were poinsettias inside. Kramer is nervous, it’s his first time out dressed up as Helen. Barbara and Baby assure him he looks great and smells wonderful. “It’s Joy!” Barbara says, guessing the name of his perfume. No, he’s wearing Shalimar and a dress made in Omaha. He’s taking them to Jason’s and then has a surprise for them. As Barbara pours daiquiris he informs the women they’re his best friends. Then Bill and Charlie bust the scene pretending to be vice and terrify Kramer with talk of taking him in. When they decide to have pity on Helen, to let her go, taking Baby and Barbara in instead, Kramer flees the house of the women he’d called his “best friends” having turned on them in self-protective fear, assuring the supposed vice that he didn’t know them, that he was instead a friend of their aunt.

The women will change into something more comfortable, Barbara removing her curly hair piece, and then they’re off to the boxing ring where Baby can’t watch the violence, keeps her eyes closed, but applauds and joins in whole-heartedly with the audience yelling encouragement. More betting and again Charlie wins, even taking the hat from the man who lost the bet. All feeding Bill’s exhilaration and excitement whereas this is routine for Charlie.

Every win for Charlie is followed by a loss. Out in the parking lot they’re held up by a man with a gun. Charlie says he can’t believe it, not two nights in a row. He gives $780 to the man, tells him to take it and go. And the robber does.

“This town is full of boys who thinks they’re pretty wise, just because they know a thing or two…there’s con men and there’s shooters…” is sung as they drive off, Charlie mourning that their winnings have been cut in half.

And the camera returning to the poker club.

“The way they get their dollars is they all have an ace stuck in the hole,” the song goes.

Charlie sits at one table playing against a number of women. Bill is at another table also playing against women. It’s not working out. Charlie shrugs it off, acknowledging there’s nothing to be won here. The camera returns to Bill several times who’s looking depressed, worried. Why? The exhilaration hasn’t lasted. He’s disturbed. What’s up.

Next shot is Bill’s office. He’s talking to “Spark” on the phone, a bookie who is demanding his money. “How many times have I told you I don’t want to be interrupted when I’m in conference with Mr. Waters,” Bill yells, gesturing to Charlie, when his secretary enters. Bill tells Spark that if he doesn’t cut him off for ten days then he’ll have the money for him. He tells him he has a source, he just hasn’t wanted to tap it. When he’s off the phone, Charlie encourages Bill to bet on the Lakers but Bill says he’s scared of it as the Lakers have been playing crappy and the Suns are hot. Charlie goes so far as to tell Bill to bet his house on it. “You’ve been saying this for three weeks, I’m lucky I’m not much of a property owner,” Bill retorts.

Barbara and Baby are working on their red VW when Bill drives up in his yellow Pinto, says he just was driving by and wanted to say hello. They’re cleaning out the car, taking down the Christmas tree lights. Where’s Charlie? “I don’t know, he got up so early I couldn’t believe it,” Barbara says.

If Bill had bet on the Lakers, which he likely had, you know he’s lost, in even deeper trouble, and Charlie’s disappearance disturbs him.

Bill walks into a hardware or paint store and calls out to a man named Harvey. Harvey asks him what he came for, then stops him from replying, says he’s getting a flash, has ECP, is blessed with it and wants to guess. “I get that you’re probably back with your old lady and that you want to paint your garage door, perhaps even the whole front of your house. I’m getting the color, it’s a greenish color.” Is he close? No, Bill tells him he needs a loan.

For the first time we know Bill is married but he and his wife have split up. Perhaps over his gambling. His interest in Barbara and Baby and Charlie makes even more sense. He’s had some empty space to fill in his life.

Next shot is Bill entering a seedy storefront painted with Live Nude/Massage enticements. He gives his name as Larry to a woman who leads him to room 211-212. “I know you’re going in here to win a bundle. Why don’t you come see me when you get out?” He’s admitted into an apartment where a card game is taking place in the living room. He looks distraught, all confidence gone. Indeed, the next shot is of him leaving at daylight and being reassured that next week he’ll win. We now see “Fun and Games” painted on the side of the strip parlor.

Bill is shown to a table in a restaurant, seated before a stained glass window. He turns down a menu. He’s not there to eat. (After the scene with the Fruit Loops I’m not certain he’s seen eating again in the film.) A man on a crutch in a brown leather coat enters and sits opposite him at the table. It’s Spark, the bookie. We learn he used to be with the Pirates, but doesn’t play ball anymore. He orders hot chili. Bill tells him how the guy he’s working for had a great Christmas and has created a slush fund out of which he can draw money. Leather jacket protests. “I carried you one year! Was there any pressure on you at all?” The conversation covers how he’s kept extending Bill a line of credit and how he can’t do it anymore. “Come pay off day you don’t have dollar one, plus you owe me more. Man I’ve heard it before. You must think I’m some stupid schmuck. In my line of thinking you took an out and out shot at me…” Bill, all desperation, insists he’s will have $700 for him the next day. And you know it won’t likely happen. He’s past the brink of catastrophic ruin, his family and financial security laid waste.

“What about my other $1500?”

“One week.”

Spark leaves before eating his chili.

Now to another bar. “Hey Sport, you wanna fill this up?” a woman is saying. “You now Jennie Carr? She’s shacking up with my old man.” A guy in a white suit, black turtleneck sits next to her, eyeing her intently, on the make. She’s drunk, talks about her neat dog, asks what she’s doing in this dump. “You should have seen where I was last night, it was really classy.” What do you about a dog that shits on the floor, she wonders. The man in the white suit seems to have finally had enough and leaves via a hall by the restrooms. Everyone has had enough with the woman who goes on about how all the men there are faggots and probably can’t get it up. “Fuck you faggot,” she says to Bill as she passes him on her way back to the restrooms. Down-on-his-luck Bill looks like he’s in danger of staying at the bottom from now on.

Back to Barbara’s place. Baby is lying reading in Barbara’s bed. Down-on-his-luck Bill knocks on the door. Barbara’s out on a date. What’s Baby doing? She’s reading a book in Barbara’s room because she doesn’t like to stay in her own room when alone. Bill’s been curious about Baby from the beginning, when he looked up to see her climbing up on a chair in her footsie pajamas to pull down a big bowl for her breakfast cereal, and now he’s found Baby alone and he’s hesitantly going to take the opportunity to explore this train wreck of an attraction to Baby, who’s played with the fullest, frailest, gentlest conviction by Gwen.

Baby informs Bill she and Barbara are off to Hawaii for two weeks and are excited about it. “Charlie never did come back. You know what happened to him?” she asks. No. She invites Bill to come in and sit down. She asks him if he’s married, his marriage brought up a second time (we never will see his wife, out of the picture). They converse about the guys she and Barbara are going to Hawaii with. She doesn’t know them. Bill asks what if she doesn’t like them and Baby says those are the chances you have to take. She asks Bill if he wants to make love with her and he says yes but he hasn’t any money. She says it’s all right, that she really likes him. “It’s different.”

“Why is it different?”

Because he took her on like a real date the night he and Charlie won at the track, and she really likes him a lot. A good bit of clumsy fumbling and anxious comedy as they start to undress. Barbara unexpectedly comes home, talks about what an evening she’s had, the man she was with almost throwing up on her. She says it’s fine if they use her bed but she wants her TV Guide which is under it. While the two women look for the TV Guide, Bill, disoriented, stands and looks at them with seeming dawning revulsion. What’s he doing here? He doesn’t get it himself why he’s there with Baby; the moment of curious exploration interrupted, he leaves and we guess we’re not likely to see these two women again, which we don’t.

Barbara cradles Baby in her disappointment. “He didn’t really like me,” Baby says.

“Of course he did.”

“No he didn’t, not really.”

Barbara tells her she’s met the guy she’s going with to Hawaii. Dark, with a five o’clock shadow, young and good looking.

“You really think I’m going to like him?’

“I think you’ll love him.”

Bill now at his home office, he’s working, listening to a game you know he’s likely got a losing bet on and you know too that he’s still in deep, owing his bookie a lot of money. Knock on the door. A voice asks if a William Denny lives there. It’s friends of Spark. Bill protests he checked with Spark and they’re straight. He moves to sneak out the back door and is surprised by Charlie standing at the window in an outlandish Mexican hat and holding a parrot pinata.

“I had this incredible dream, I was in Tijuana at the dog track,” Charlie says. And every dog he was betting on won. What does he know about dogs? But he was feeling a winner. Bill says why didn’t he take him along, that Charlie doesn’t know what it’s been like there. And Charlie reveals that he didn’t win, not one race.

“If I had been there you would of,” Bill says.

“You weren’t in the dream, William. A parrot was in the dream though. Bet #4, #4…he doesn’t eat nothing…” Much like Bill doesn’t eat much either. I’m reminded of Persephone’s plunge into Hades where she doesn’t eat much in the land of the spirits, except for the one pomegranate seed, like Bill’s bowl of Fruit Loops.

Frustrated, Bill goes to the table and starts figuring something out on paper. He says he’s going to Reno. Reno? Charlie argues they’re going to want cash at Reno, not his typewriter.

“Why Reno?” Charlie asks. Why not Vegas? Bill insists he’s going to win. Charlie argues it’s a tough game with a lot of lumberjackets going there, tough action.

“I don’t like you coming here with all your pessimistic shit…” interfering.. “I’m going to win!” Bill exclaims.

Charlie insists he wasn’t interfering and Bill says he doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. “Because I know how I feel! Baby, I’m going to win!”

“I believe ya,” says Charlie.

How to make it up with disgruntled Bill? Charlie conceals his right arm in his jacket and picks up something off Bill’s desk as he enters his bedroom. Asks Bill if he’s ever shown him his one armed piccolo player. “The man is a classic. World-renowned. The man is known all over the world. When I reach my crescendo you’ve got to give me a little hand. A little applause, William.” Bill’s got to respond, got to congratulate, got to involve himself. Charlie pretends to play one of the dances from the Nutcracker Suite. Asks Charlie for his applause then puts the piccolo down to his pants where a finger reaches out his fly to hold it, looking briefly like a penis. Bill is first taken aback, then cracks up laughing at the trick.

“You need a partner?” Charlie asks.

“Yeah, I think so. You going to take it away now?” Pointing to the piccolo which is some kind of dagger that Charlie now pulls out of its sheath and jokes, “I’m gonna stab myself with it!”

Next shot Charlie’s out trying to play some basketball with some younger guys (you know there’s going to be a bet in it somewhere) while Bill goes to a pawn shop with signs on the outside reading, “Music instr. typewriters, radios, stereos, 11517″. Carries in a lot of merchandise, wanting a lot of money. He sells it all outright as it will make him the most money. Back on the ball court Bill appears to have lost and the boys talk about him being an old man. Now he proposes a bet. The boys are convinced they’ll win and pool their money. They’ll play 11 hoops. Charlie wins every one, of course.

Now to the Paul Hart Co. where Bill is trying to sell his yellow Pinto. He’s offered $2200.

Charlie is at the race track, tosses away his ticket having obviously lost. “I’m getting buried here.” We see Lew who’d mugged him at the beginning of the film. Charlie hides his face as he passes. Lew has a little altercation with the bartender over a drink he’d left there and then having another drink gives him a tip. When he leaves the bartender asks Charlie if the guy is a friend of his and Charlie replies (curiously) it’s a cousin. He follows Lew back to the restroom, which appears empty, and the moment he begins to confront Lew, Lew punches him good in the nose, laying him on the floor.

“That’s the greatest punch I’ve ever been hit with,” Charlie concedes, then despite the blood and his apparently broken nose is up. Fighting, Lew and Charlie burst in on some guy seated on a toilet. Finally, Lew lies on the floor, beaten. Charlie gives back to him what he got, kicking him in the ribs and takes his money. It’s kind of a painful scene, the eye for an eye retribution and after I blogged the film I listened to the commentary and Altman said he did it for the audience, that they needed this with Lew. I’m not convinced the audience did, but apparently the character of Charlie did and it added an extra dimension to the Funny Man. As he leaves, he tells some men entering, “You better call an ambulance. The man lost the last race and tried to kill himself.”

Now Charlie (his nose bandaged up) and Bill are on a bus headed for Reno. Bill says he’s putting in 18 and Charlie will put in 11. It’s the last time they’re going to hear anything about losing. Running into Lew was a good omen. They arrive at Reno, “Biggest Little City in the World”. More good omens. The rain could have been snow. Good vibes. Good signs. Things feel good.

Another odd moment where they’re crossing a street because in the commentary Joseph Walsh (the script writer) describes the moment as a “miracle” when Charlie raises his arms before a car he’s passing in front of and yelling, “There ain’t nobody there” synchronizing with the music. DVD Beaver points out that the original songs in the track for the Reno trip were “Goin’ to Kansas City” and “Me and My Shadow”, and that the lyric “We never knock, ’cause there’s nobody there” and coincided with Charlie’s “There ain’t nobody there line”.

Charlie tells Bill he’s got to give a smile every once and a while during the game, that it won’t break the concentration.

They enter the casino and Charlie, seeing an elephant statuette, asks Bill to rub its trunk for good luck. “Have you ever seen an elephant fly?” Referring back to one of them having erroneously, drunkenly named Dumbo as one of the Seven Dwarfs toward film’s beginning.

Charlie’s going to fly, like Dumbo.

They come to the red-carpeted hall leading down to the high stakes poker game. Artificial jungle plants and stuffed rams adorn. “I don’t know if these are past winners or losers,” Charlie says. There’s a $2000 buy-in. Bill’s there to play. Seated at a small bar in the room, Charlie gives Bill the run-down on the personality types of the other players. The bald guy is a percentage player. The guy with the cowboy hat is Lyndon Johnson, a haberdasher. The Kid, the one with the curls, has been trying to play the game since before he was born. An older man with glasses has the personality of the Dr., going to lose patience losing hands. Red Coat, a former cha-cha dancer, is falling out and Charlie anticipates that’s where Bill will be sitting next. Then there’s the empty seat in front of which is a mighty high stack of chips. Who sits there? If it’s the Invisible Man and you see the chips rising up on their own the game’s too tough and they’re leaving, Charlie says. Then there’s the Mississippi man. And the Chinaman? If he starts yapping he’s cracking. The bartender, who’s been listening in, says Charlie’s done very well in his analysis.

Out goes Red Coat, “Mr. Cha Cha”, and a man named Huey gestures Bill to enter the game. Bill lays out the money, shoulders hunched, and you’re not overly confident in Bill. Charlie tells the bartender Bill’s dynamite, the bartender replies that he needs to be in that company, and the camera goes to the long red hall and a man in a brown suit and cowboy hat entering, walking down it, the man with the big stack of chips. It’s Slim. He pulls out a hunk of cash and asks the bartender to place a bet for him on Old Blue out of Chute Number Two down at the race track. Charlie asks if it’s reliable info and says he’ll lay down on it too. Slim asks if Charlie wants to get involved in the poker game and Charlie says he’s playing right now.

“You’re playing right now?”

Bill turns to look back at them.

“That’s me, the good looking fellow in the brown coat.”

Slim wishes him luck and takes his place at the table. Charlie asks the bartender if he’s for real.

Cut to a rolling wheel of chance and a woman playing piano and singing before it, the same woman whose voice has been featured all along in the film, like a siren drawing them down to Reno. “Look down that lonesome road before traveling on it…”

Bill tells Charlie he can’t settle down with him there. Tells him he’s got to go. Charlie insists he’s got to stay. “You’re telling me I’m interfering with your game?” He asks Bill for at least a little money but Bill gives him nothing. Charlie wanders down the red carpet to the tune of “Look down that lonesome road…look up and seek your maker before Gabriel blows his horn.” DVD Beaver points out that the song here originally was “You’re Nobody ’til Somebody Loves You.” (In order for the film to be rereleased, costs for music use had to be cut, thus the changes.)

Relaxing, Bill smiles and returns to the game.

Charlie asks for a $1000 credit out where the slot machines are. Realizes he’s not getting any credit and gets a roll of nickles. “I got 2 cherries and nothing happened! Let me have a pit boss!”

After a while Bill goes to find Charlie at the bar and informs him they’re up $11,000. Charlie insists they pack it in. Bill insists he keep on playing. Still he won’t give Charlie any money and returns to the game.

Oh, I don’t want to watch.

Bill comes back in with $18,000. He’s stoked. He’s going to play his winnings at another one of the games. Charlie begs for some money but Bill still gives him nothing. Charlie goes looking for credit.

The next time Charlie comes up to Bill, he’s lost almost all the money. Bill yells at him to get out, that he’s going to kill the streak.

Bill wins with number 26. Now they’ll play craps. “I got it Charlie, I got it.” And he seems to. They’re working as a team now. Bill throws the dice, Charlie bets or calls the numbers (I forget which) and the chips pile up. 3 11s in a row. The crowd gathers around. 4 11s in a row. 9. A hard 6. They say they’ve got to make it the biggest win the dealer’s ever seen. A woman lays down a dollar on 7 and Charlie throws her a hundred. She wins. Bill, seemingly dejected, leaves the table. Starts pouring chips out of his jacket pockets onto the bar in a side room. Charlie looks for him and fills a bowl with the chips he’s carrying. Bill says he’s tired and he looks exhausted, as if he’s about to fall over. Charlie talks about all they’re going to do. “We haven’t even started yet.” He wants to rest up and now do some betting himself.

Strange feelings as Gould goes to cash in the winnings. Bill at the bar, sitting by himself, looking exhausted, lost. The camera keeps cutting between Charlie’s exuberance and Bill. They’ve won $82,000. Charlie returns and divides the money between them both. Security stands by the door. “An even split,” Charlie says. “You always take winning this hard?”

Bill laments there was no special feeling.

“Doesn’t mean a fucking thing does it?” Charlie acknowledges.

Bill says he has to go.

“Oh yeah, where do you live?” Charlie asks.

Bill leaves.

Charlie takes the money out of his shoes in which he’d stored it, spins the roulette wheel and walks out of the scene. “Bye-bye Blackbird” is sung.

* * * * * *

And thus ends the friendship. It’s a satisfying end to the film, about the only satisfying conclusion one can imagine, though you’re seriously kept in suspense to the end wondering if Bill or Charlie will blow it. Had Bill or Charlie blown it, the film would have been wrong. Had Bill won and all was up-up celebration and cheery fireworks then the film would have been wrong. But it’s not a morality play, a film on the evils of gambling, because most of the big players have had a different temperament from Bill, playing being their business, their work, whereas you always have the feeling that Bill is at the hem of it all despite his catastrophic losses, it’s not his job, he’s looking for something more in it. The film has been described as being one in which nothing much happens, not having a lot of plot, just the two guys playing poker, there’s a documentary feel to it and thus you come away knowing a little more about how gambling’s done in a big way. The assessment is wrong as there’s quite a lot going on in the film under the surface, that’s not explicit, but which is summed up by Bill winning, bewildered by still feeling lost, not having found the meaning that he