Wednesday, January 22, 2014

FAREWELL TO THE KING

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farewell_to_the_King

References[edit]

  1. ^ Jump up to:a b The Wild Man of Hollywood Meets the Wilds of Borneo Mathews, Jack. Los Angeles Times (1923-Current File) [Los Angeles, Calif08 Nov 1987: K4] accessed 2 May 2013
  2. Jump up^ In Borneo's Wilds, Legend Takes Root: In 'Farewell to the King,' John Milius tells a tale of the struggle for freedom. In the Wilds of Borneo, Legend Takes Root By JOHN CULHANE. New York Times (1923-Current file) [New York, N.Y] 26 Feb 1989: H15.
  3. Jump up^ Ken Plume, "Interview with John Milius", IGN Film, 7 May 2003 accessed 5 January 2013
  4. Jump up^ Segaloff, Nat, "John Milius: The Good Fights", Backstory 4: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1970s and 1980s, Ed. Patrick McGilligan, Uni of California 2006 p 305
  5. Jump up^ Medavoy, Mike with Josh Young, You're Only as Good as Your Next One, Astria, 2002 p 174-175


    In Borneo's Wilds, Legend Takes Root: In 'Farewell to the King,' John Milius tells a tale of the struggle for freedom. In the Wilds of Borneo, Legend Takes Root By JOHN CULHANE. New York Times (1923-Current file) [New York, N.Y] 26 Feb 1989: H15.


    FAFAREWELL TO THE KING


    Farewell to the King

    From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    Farewell to the King
    FarewelltotheKingDVD.jpg
    DVD release cover
    Directed byJohn Milius
    Produced byAndre Morgan
    Albert Ruddy
    Written byJohn Milius (screenplay)
    Based on the bookL'Adieu au Roi by Pierre Schoendoerffer
    StarringNick Nolte
    Nigel Havers
    Frank McRae
    Gerry Lopez
    Music byBasil Poledouris
    CinematographyDean Semler
    Editing byAnne V. Coates
    Carroll Timothy O'Meara
    Distributed byOrion Pictures
    Release datesMarch 3, 1988
    Running time115 minutes
    CountryUnited States
    LanguageEnglish
    Budget$16 million[1]
    Box office$2,420,917
    Farewell to the King is a 1988 film written and directed by John Milius. It stars Nick Nolte, Nigel Havers, Frank McRae, and Gerry Lopez and is based on the 1969 novelL'Adieu au Roi by Pierre Schoendoerffer. Longtime Milius collaborator Basil Poledouris composed the musical score.

    Plot summary[edit]

    During World War II, American deserter Learoyd escapes a Japanese firing squad. Hiding himself in the wilds of Borneo, Learoyd is adopted by a head-hunting tribe of Dayaks, who consider him "divine" because of his blue eyes. Before long, Learoyd is the reigning king of the Dayaks. When British soldiers approach him to rejoin the war against the Japanese, Learoyd resists. When his own tribe is threatened by the invaders, however, the "king" deigns to fight for their rights.



    FAREWELL TO THE KING

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    The opening image in “Farewell to the King” shows a man walking out on World War II. His lifeboat has been washed ashore on a tropical island somewhere in the Pacific, and while his fellow survivors are captured and executed by the Japanese, he plunges into the jungle, staggering and hallucinating until he is found by a native tribe. When the movie rejoins his life three years later, he is the king of the tribe and is trying to steer it clear of the war.
    This image of the white man deep in the jungle ruling a tribe must be a compelling one forJohn Milius, who wrote and directed “Farewell to the King.” In his screenplay for Francis Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now,” Milius created a similar character for Marlon Brando. Learoyd, the character played by Nick Nolte in this film, is like Kurtz, the Brando character: He has gone AWOL and native, and lives in a jungle fastness, catered to by a tribe that regards as a sort of god.
    There is probably a deep-seated personal impulse at work here.
    Does Milius imagine his characters shouldering the White Man’s Burden, or does he see them escaping a corrupt civilization to live in an unspoiled natural society? With Kurtz, we never knew, but the Nolte character in “Farewell to the King” gladly embraces his new situation and wants to drop out of Western civilization if he can. At a key point in the film, he shows a visiting British officer a secret valley in the heart of the island, where a sort of Shangri-La has grown up, isolated from the corruptions of the outside. He feels it is his mission to protect this sacred place from the Japanese and the Allies.
    It is tempting to consider the politics of this movie, which waver between benevolent despotism and anthropological zeal. But perhaps Milius really has no message. The spirit of the film seems closer to the work of Conrad or Melville than to contemporary politics: Here is an extraordinary man, the story says, who finds himself in an extraordinary situation and takes advantage of it. I was reminded a little of Van Wyk, the Dutchman in Conrad’s End of the Tether who runs his corner of the Pacific more or less the way he wants to, and knows enough about his fellow Europeans to keep them at arm’s length.
    In a film like this, the central performance is crucial, and Nolte is absorbed by the character. Just a few days before seeing “Farewell to the King” I saw Nolte as a painter - a manipulator and player in the New York art world - in theMartin Scorsese segment of “New York Stories.” Now here he was half naked in the jungle, dandling an infant on his knee. Nolte’s strength as an actor is that he seemed at home in both environments; he was an inhabitant, not a visitor.
    The plot, based on a novel by Pierre Schoendoerffer, is much more predictable than the situation. Learoyd, the Nolte character, is a full-blown tribal king by the time we see him again, and the movie bypasses any attempt to show how he won that status, preferring instead to move ahead to a more conventional action scenario. British commandos, led by Nigel Havers, are parachuted onto the island to try to enlist the American and his tribesmen in the war against the Japanese. Learoyd wants nothing to do with them.
    “You cannot turn your back on this war,” Havers warns him, and sure enough, he is right. Milius then unfolds a more or less predictable series of action scenes in which Learoyd turns into a superhuman fighting machine, blasting countless foes to smithereens before finally announcing, “From this day forward, I will raise my hand against no man.” This vow is less impressive than it might have been, since there are few enemies left alive to raise his hand against. And then there is a sequel revealing whether Learoyd realizes his dream of living apart from civilization.
    What is most interesting about “Farewell to the King” is its impulse to tell this story at all. It could so easily have become ridiculous, or merely violent, but Milius keeps edging back toward the philosophy of his hero. Learoyd is given several speeches in which he explains why he believes what he believes, and the movie never becomes only an action film. There is a contradiction somewhere, I suppose, in the story of a pacifist isolationist who kills in order to defend his vision, but what the heck, nobody’s perfect.
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    Sunday, January 19, 2014

    Mystery Guests on the Seder Plate: Charoset, Lettuce and Egg



    Mystery Guests on the Seder Plate: Charoset, Lettuce and Egg

    The complex ritual of the Seder provides many opportunities for occult interpretations (see my earlier entry, The Ritual Mysticism and Magic of Passover ). Rabban Gamliel, for example, requires at a minimum that we explain the symbolism of three objects at the seder: The Pesach (shankbone) Matzah (unleavened bread) and Maror (bitter herb). But there are many more objects and gestures that get little or no explicit explanation. These are the "objects that don't know how to explain themselves."

    For example - we always say the charoset (the fruit and nut compote) represents the mortar with which our ancestors set the bricks during their slavery. Yet this interpretation feels a little contrived. Why would the mortar binding us to misery be sweet? Art Waskow finally offered a drash on charoset that makes perfect sense to me. Waskow posits that the ingredients are drawn directly from foods mentioned in the Song of Songs - apples, wine, nuts, and spices. Since the early mystics understand the S of S to be God's inner thoughts at the time of Exodus, this garden of metaphors signifies the divine passion ("Your kisses are sweeter than wine") for the people Israel. The charoset then is not a reminder of concrete, but a concrete reminder of God's love for us at the time of Pesach. I think this insight is the right one and reaches back to the true roots of this minhag (custom).

    Then there is the lettuce (hazeret). People are forever puzzled as to why there needs to be a second herb on the seder plate besides the horseradish. While a Mishna on the seder mentions hazeret as well as maror, many treated the terms as synonymous. Early seder plates only had five spots, while virtually all made today have six to accommodate this second herb. The lettuce has its roots in Sefardic mysticism, which insists on this added component. Why? In order to better represent the sefirot, the mystical divine structure. By having the lettuce as well as the horseradish, there are then ten components (three matzot, zaroa, carpas, maror, beitzah, charoset, hazeret and the seder plate) to the seder that parallel the ten sefirotic elements (Keter, Chokhmah, Binah, Gevurah, Hesed, Tiferet, Hod, Netzach, Yesod, and Malchut).

    Finally, there is the roasted egg. Forget the "symbol of spring" or "cycle of the year" explanation. Even the "It symbolizes the birth of a nation" interpretation is a latecomer, though it makes me smile. The actual origin is not really esoteric. It's there to remind us of (that's why it's roasted) but not replace (that's why it's an egg, not a lamb) the Chagigah (festival) offering made in the Temple at Pesach. Don't confuse that offering with the Pesach lamb once eaten as part of the seder - in ancient times lambs were offered both at home and in the Temple.

    But the egg in particular seems to attract funky and novel interpretations. A new drash I've heard is on the widespread Ashkenazi custom of starting the Pesach dinner by dipping a boiled egg in salt water and eating it. Earlier explanations I have heard is that it meant to remind us of Sodom, for the city was supposedly destroyed in the month of Nisan (yeah, I don't quite get it either). Then this year someone assured me it was a "Kabbalistic ritual" in commemoration of the crossing of the Sea of Reeds. While we started out walking on dry land, as the Torah and Midrash says, according to this new explanation, the sea started to rise again until the Israelites had their male genitalia dipping in the salty waters.

    I had to have that one explained to me twice. The person was quite insistent that this was the true meaning of the ritual. My first reaction was, "...and this is supposed to teach us -- what?" The question I should have asked was, "Since it's an egg, isn't it commemorating how the salty waters touched the genitalia of ourfemale ancestors?" But there you have it - yet another Jewish ritual that seemingly neglects the female experience.*
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