Best Minds Of My Generation
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness
Notes for people who hated the film and/or did not understand film and/or think film is pointless
Includes dialogue from film
I...
lost...
something...
on my way.
I lost something on my way...
to... wherever...
I am today.
I remember... when...
I remember... when...
I remember... when...
You can't do anything, I don't know what I am
Look at this. Look how it's starting to crystallize.This is cellulous nitrate, same stuff as film stock. This is eventually gonna implode. Completely crystallize and implode.
Do we need anything? Can we just go?
Let's just get the blank out of here.- Let's just go.
Where are we gonna go?
We'll go to Los Angeles.
Music video in movie was Boyz II Men - On Bended Knee. l
Lyrics - http://tinyurl.com/3ddusy - the lyrics represent the opposite of Blake/Kurt's demise (young man trying to get his life and priorities back on track, repentant, full of love and desire to live)
Structure is a deterritorialized framework to disorient viewers, the disorientation crafted to get viewers to feel how it feels to feel disorientated, disconnected, despirited, etc
The failure of those who are raising our children, we've created these reckless, despairing, emotionally voided, lost, indifferent youths who are unable to function, unable to be self-sufficient, unable to operate, intentionally and unintentionally helpless, unable to enter the world (not talking about conforming, but simply enter the world), we're all collectively guilty, we're creating these people, we're steering them towards self-destruction and failure, humankind failing, humankind creating pain, suffering
Human Encroachment which destroys natural landscape, beauty; Van Sant has touched upon this in other films
Words - mumbling, confusion, inability to articulate thoughts, emotions, confusion of mind, body, spirit, soul
Water - cleansing - but no sense of rebirth, no affect on him other than to disorient him further, he has no appreciation for beauty
No feeling of higher presence, no feeling of divine presence, no feeling that nature is alive and breathing
Urination contrasted against torrential water falls - all man is pish compared to nature, the sum total of man is nothing, man makes his mark (like Blake pishing), that was Blake's attempt to equalize himself to nature (pish fall, water fall) but it was nothing compared to powerful torrents, look, I'm pishing, hear me roar, but it's nothing, or look, I'm making music, or selling advertisements, or selling religion, but it's all nothing compared to nature
Outdoors - does not even know what to do, doesn't appreciate it, disconnected, there's no feeling of something greater, a greater force at work, no feeling of Nature omnipotent eternal, just a feeling of nothing, of void, disorientation
Campfire - home on the range, how much has youth/mankind fallen, how far have we fallen that our children end up like that, what kind of culture have we created, how far has humankind fallen that we laugh at the idea of living on a range, we're out of touch with the land, we're disconnected from and destroying the environment and nature, something Van Sant has touched upon in his other films
He howls, dog answers - no matter how ensconced in isolation he is, human encroachment, and the encroachment is negative (dog barking is irritating, annoying, dog telling you to get off property but dog is far off). He doesn't appear to be contemplating, he doesn't appear to be listening for something more (G-d perhaps), seeking answers, seeking private communicative prayer, just nothing
Fire - can't feel warmth, hear it but not feel it
Swamps, swampy mind, physically unhealthy; he's already killed himself spiritually and physically and mentally, he's battered, numbed, undesired, not desiring others, we're watching him stagger through the last spasms of life, we're watching that Wasted Youth Landscape that Van Sant is addressing stagger through its last days, a culture dying out
Silver Train shoots through - human encroachment, no isolation, no privacy. Also a moment of clarity for him, a flash of insight: train is escape, presence of train means he's still not alone, mankind/technology is encroaching upon his castle hide-away
What is wrong with our Youths, what are we doing to them, what have we turned our Youths into - inarticulate, physically sloppish, disinterested in LIFE, spiritually sapped
We frequently see him from a distance, not up close, and when we see him up close he's not what we thought
He goes out of the frame - we can't always see where he goes, we're not supposed to see where he goes, he goes where we can't follow him - into the great unknown, we don't see everything and we're not meant to
TV karate - physically fit, control of body and physicality, self-assurance, pride, stamina - all the things the Disenfranchised Insouciant Youthscape completely lack, the karate on tv contrasts with Kurt/Blake/Disenfranchised Youths that Van Sant was focusing on
Cocoa Rice Krispies - How have we raised our children, they can't cook for themselves, they're unhealthy, they're not self-sufficient, lacking basic life skills; Van Sant has criticized industrial food in his other films, Even Cowgirls Get The Blues
Waste of money - all that money and isn't doing anything with it, squandering it, doesn't know how to maintain a house/castle
Phone call - doesn't know how to stand up for himself and take control of his life, we're failing our children by not teaching them what they need to know to be in control and sustain themselves, what have we done to our children
Yellow Pages/Thaddeus - sales sales sales, clean cut, articulate, conformity, commercialism, driven, at ease, everything Wasted Youth are not, etc, yet a hollow empty profession with the goal of getting people to spend spend spend; he doesn't care about Blake's debilitated state; we live in a world where corporate/conformity/sales are more important and respected then nonconformity/self/art; artists are allowed to waste away and nobody cares; corporate encroachment upon artist; Thaddeus only cares about money, he even says, "okay, we'll run the same ad one more time" instead of asking Blake whether or not he wants to run another advertisement; he takes advantage of Blake and moves on, and he's respected; town exploding with business, people moving in because of the beauty of surroundings: human encroachment destroying nature, eliminating his privacy
Asia Argento trying to grapple with stretched out collapsed Blake - the antithesis of Michelangelo's PietÃ
Blake falling down, nodding off; on bended knee [Boyz II Men]; Church of Jesus Christ visitors: prayer; how religion has become commodified
Falling down, on bended knee, prayer
Blake kneels down because he's wasting away
On bended knee for forgiveness, kneel down to pray for a sign
Blake kneeling down, window: bright white light, and to the left, a cross of sunlight; as missionaries are explaining how 14 year old knelt and prayed for answers, a pillar of light descended upon him, and when that pillar reached him, he saw two figures directly above him, and one said "This is my son, Jesus Christ, hear him"; camera then shows us glimpses of Blake kneeling down haphazardly, vegetatively, indifferently, the light in the room never touches him, he appears to be crawling towards it without being aware he's crawling towards it, but remains ungraced, unsaved, untouched; what's happened to our youth where they lack SPIRITUALITY, they lack the desire to meditate and ponder, they're no longer looking inward and upward, no more spirit, no faith in life, no more prayer, no more hope, what have we done to lead these kids to that point, how have we failed them
Blake contrasted with Jesus, but there's nothing redemptive about his wasting away towards death, there's nothing redemptive about his suicide (I'm taking the position that he killed himself), Jesus' death instilled in people the desire to forgive and love and tolerate and maintain hope, Blake's death is a waste, no hope, no nothing, for no one
Boyz (Blake, Kurt, the Landscape of Wasted Youth who are children out there in the world, directionless and disconnected and reckless and unwilling to care for themselves and out of control) To Men (control, responsibility, immersion into the world). The Landscape of Wasted Youth failed to transform into Men
The song was "On Bended Knee". The singer was asking for forgiveness, redemption, a rebirth. The singer was lamenting that he lost his way, and was trying to start over, he wanted a second chance, he wanted G-d to give him the strength to start again, he did not want to be alone, he was begging his woman to return to him, he blamed himself for making mistakes, and he believed that love would heal him.
The Landscape of Wasted Youth Gus Van Sant was depicting in the film were incapable of or unwilling to or disinterested in getting down on bended knee to sort themselves out.
Getting on bended metaphorically represents falling down before G-d and begging for grace and redemption.
In addition, on a basic level, that song was extremely popular and Boyz II Men were well-respected because they were the antithesis of rap and "grunge" musicians like Nirvana: they were clean-cut conformists singing clearly and expressing positive lyrics, they received wide-spread critical acclaim for presenting a squeaky clean homely image, yet their music was manufactured junk, and there was Nirvana, a group that single-handedly transformed the landscape of music, but critics unleashed a never-ending stream of criticism against their music and their overall image was constantly attacked by the media.
The music video alone encapsulated the battle between commercially-produced art and independently self-produced art, and the battle between several key social/cultural structures that have always been fought.
Death By Misadventure: American and Chinese magician: American magician lacked originality, plagiarized Chinese magician, nobody cared, treated American like a genius-original; just like Kurt (admitted to copying Pixies, and his versions of songs written by other people were considered brilliant); also the American died onstage during a failed trick, perhaps suicide, like Kurt/Blake and the entire cultural landscape Van Sant is referring to - it destroyed itself
Looping - mockery of Smells Like Teen Spirit looping; Kurt bashed the loops of mechanization re-arrangement of his music on the Nevermind cd; but it's also a roar, a crying roar of help and pain and rage, being repeated over and over and over: the point is made; one of the most important scenes in the film because it proved that Blake was more than an impenetrable, wasted, lifeless stone in the wilderness, not to mention that it personified his trapped rage echoing back onto itself, and it personified the commercialization of music (the looping of the raging roar)
Kim Gordon - only real connection made in the film, are you free, are you free to play guitar, have you spoken to your daughter
Kittens - who will care for them, who will care for children; earlier Blake acted irresponsibly with gun, and can't even take care of himself, yet he's to be trusted with kittens? Analogy to how adults are raising their kids
Camera lolls along stoned, captured the visual feeling of being stoned, the disintegration of wasted youth landscape that existed during years leading up to death of Phoenix/Cobain; to visually create the feeling of being stoned and drifting and insouciant and void of emotion, to temporally differentiate between the real-time hustle-bustle clockwork manner in which the average viewer lives, and the disconnected, clockless, random, disorientated pace that the sum total of the Blake/Kurt/Landscape of Wasted Youth (the segment of people and the lifestyle Van Sant was focused on) lives
Duplicating certain scenes using different perspectives and presenting them diptychly and triptychly enabled the director to amplify the thematic parallels between the episodes. Also, what we see onscreen or read in print is one aspect of a celebrity's life, and those are usually the only perspectives we see of that person's life: imagine if we had access to all possible perspectives. Van Sant was illustrating the disparity between what we think we know about a celebrity and what we don't know, and how we're only given glimpses of each perspective. No matter how many perspectives are presented, all we have are glimpses of those moments.
I am tired, I am weary, I could sleep for a thousand years
Blake runs off, extended shot of foliage - outside our frame of vision, his thoughts cut off to us, his thoughts a wild tangle of foliage, we can't follow where he's going, that is a journey he must make by himself, the foliage randomly dances in the breeze, it's as if Blake never existed, as if he never walked through there, the earth lives on but the soul and mind and spirit do not; he implodes beyond the frame, beyond our ability to save him, paralleling what the investigator in Blake's house said when he looked at something in the house - the object was made of cellulous nitrate (which film stock is comprised of) but was starting to crystallize and would eventually implode
Macaroni and cheese - can't care for himself, can't even make something intentionally dumbed down to be simple to make, he comments upon artificial cheese - food is artificial and cheap and unhealthy - yet the irony is even though he has money to eat better, he doesn't even know how to cook for himself and would not be able to make macaroni and cheese from scratch
Lukas Haas - sex with a fan: Scarlet Diva (2000) reference
Blake privately wails a "why have you forsaken me" lament, but no one listens
Animal jawbone/virility upon him - Stephen King's The Gunslinger, jawbone and sex with spirit; part of the The Dark Tower/Wastelands series; Book 3 is The Wastelands, Kurt the Gunslinger because in Book 7 it's implied Roland's journey will repeat itself to infinity, much like Kurt's demise will forever be repeated in our minds, and it's repeated each and every time another young person falls into a life of wasting away, Kurt wasn't the first and won't be the last, it's an endless cycle
Walk around city and talk to guy (Harmony Korine) - it's all the same, everywhere
Leaving body, ascension - still indifferent, despite being free, lacking spiritual feeling, will wander forever in confused forest
Go to LA, premonition of things never changing - LA is worse, vast opportunities to waste away, unlimited wasting, but LA glamourizes it as plasticized polished elitist sophistication, Van Sant's cultural scene has been cleaned up and repackaged as something "acceptable", and the last days of what we once knew have been forcibly stamped out, it feels like an entirely different world, the gesalt of the time/world that Kurt Cobain and River Phoenix lived in no longer exists, it was a whole other lifetime, it's bifurcated and irresolvable and circular and that is what Van Sant has given to us, the last days of a time/world that no longer exists for me personally