Parsifal is one of those corkscrew artifacts of culture in which you get the subjective sense that you’ve learned something from it, something valuable or even priceless; but on closer inspection you suddenly begin to scratch your head and say “Wait a minute. This makes no sense.” I can see Richard Wagner standing at the gates of heaven. “You have to let me in,” he says. “I wrote Parsifal. It has to do with the Grail, Christ, suffering, pity and healing. Right?” And they answer, “Well, we read it and it makes no sense.” SLAM. Wagner is right and so are they. It’s another Chinese fingertrap.
Or perhaps I’m missing the point. What we have here is a Zen paradox. That which makes no sense make the most sense. I am being caught in a sin of the highest magnitude: using Aristotelian two-value logic: “A thing is either A or not A.” (The Law of the Excluded Middle.) Everybody knows that Aristotelian two-value logic is fucked. What I am saying is that—
What are Kyle MacLachlan and Sean Young doing at that rug store?
You could be describing late period Lynch, e.g. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with me, Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, or Inland Empire.
Oh, so THAT’S why Kyle MacLachlan’s at the rug store.
Aren’t you quoting from Philip K. Dick’s VALIS?
Indeed I am. I cite him at the end of the post. Is that not visible on your browser?
Oh man, Syberberg’s Parsifal is fucking nuts. Not just because of the aggressive rear-projection and use of Nazi flags and such, but also because of how…bewilderingly…slow…it…is. Its four-plus hours vividly capture this feeling of living death, and frankly not even Tarkovsky or Tarr can make time disappear quite like Syberberg does here.
Which reminds me: oughtta break out that copy of Hitler: A Film About Germany that’s been collecting dust on my bookshelf since January.
Is that not visible on your browser?
Strangely, no. On my browser here at work, the last visible words are “What I am saying is that—” and then the post ends.
I’ll try again when I get home.
Candy asses. I went to the opera – more than SIX HOURS with nothing much to look at on an almost bare stage but the singers craning their necks to hit those Wagnerian highs.