The kid in the womb: Father whom I love?
Me: Yes, nighly-jettisoned blossom of the Toner gene tree?
Sonya: How much longer till I step into the light of day?
Me: Like two more months now, kid. Hang in there. We're all impatient.
Sonya: Are you ready?
Me: Ha! Ha ha ha ha ha! Aaaaaaaaahahahahahahaha!
Sonya: . . .
Me: Oh, were you—were you serious? No, I'm not ready. Good Lord, no.
Sonya: There's not that much time left, Pop. How long till you're ready?
Me: Prob'ly about eighteen years? Sometimes the Big Guy just throws you in at the deep end, you know. I wasn't ready to be born when it was my turn.
Sonya: But you're a grown-up now.
Me: Well, I tell you what. It struck me recently that I am now older than my father was when I was born. And now that I'm groping my way through adult life constantly asking myself "Okay, what would an adult do in this situation?", I have a brand new perspective on what the average day must have felt like for Dad back then. Five'll getcha ten he spent a lot of time asking himself what his father would've done, and his father asked the same question before him.
Sonya: No bet.
Me: Clever girl. I think in the end, we become what we pretend to be; I hope to God if I keep trying to do what a good father would do, eventually I'll become one for real.
Sonya: Is that how you're preemptively justifying your interrogation of all my future boyfriends?
Me: Hellz yeah it is.
"Last chance, dirtbag. Where's the kibble?"
Sonya: So. . . What if you really screw something up?
Me: Oh honey, I will. I won't mean to, at least I pray that I'll never mean to, but I will absolutely screw up. It's the part about free will that they don't tell you: when you make mistakes, you're not ultimately the one that bears the consequence. I suspect Adam and Eve would rather have suffered in Purgatory for a trillion aeons than watch all their children pay for their sin. But we don't get that option. So when I screw up and you suffer, you and your mother and I will do what we can to fix it; but more importantly, I will beg God and trust God to find a way to make you stronger for it. In the end, that's the best I can really do.
Sonya: That is a hard outlook, old man.
Me: Turns out the great truths are rarely comforting in the short run. For me, it helps to try and look at this whole thing as less of a desperate hazard and more of a perilous adventure.
Sonya: Doesn't growing up mean giving up adventures?
Me: Oh, goodness no. It just means they get stretched out. They take way longer, and there's less moment-to-moment excitement. But the risks get bigger, and so does the grace. Dragons come fifteen years long, and they give you mortgages and ulcers—and the princesses fall asleep in your lap while you read them bedtime stories.
Sonya: That doesn't sound so bad.
Me: Nah. You remember Reepicheep? The swordsmouse from Narnia?
Sonya: Sure.
Me: Whenever something dangerous came along and the others wanted to get the hell out of there, he always said, "Let us take the adventure that Aslan sends us." That's the principle by which I'm trying to live.
Sonya: And if the adventure's more than you can handle?
Me: Handle it anyway, I guess. Jesus cursed the fig tree for not bearing fruit, even though it wasn't the season for figs. Sometimes you just have to do more than you can.
Sonya: So that's what makes you a grown-up.
Me: I think it is. We'll grow up together, you and I.
Sonya: Love you, Dad.
Me: Love you too, Magdalena Rose.
Everyone remembers H.G. Wells, and most people know G.B. Shaw, if only for Pygmalion (better known, of course, as My Fair Lady). But apart from that particular brace of Brits, most of G.K. Chesterton's enemies are now remembered solely as G.K. Chesterton's enemies. I've never heard of Dean Inge or Robert Blatchford or Joseph McCabe, except as people getting mowed down in big fat jolly hails of Chesterton, like black-suited goons in a gunfight with John Wick. I have no idea who Mr. William Archer may have been; but he pops up for a second in Orthodoxy while G.K. reloads after perforating Matthew Arnold. "Mr. William Archer even suggested that in the golden age there would be penny-in-the-slot machines, by which a man could kill himself for a penny." But unlike most faceless cannon-fodder, Mr. William Archer actually managed to hit something.
Dr. Nitschke Sarco of Australia has invented a 3D-printable suicide machine. It's what it sounds like. I don't really want to get into the ethics of this, because that would be like entering a serious debate about whether or not the Third Reich was, on the whole, bad. I just want to talk about ovens for a moment. Apparently, up until the tag-end of the '50s, British homes were all heated with coal gas. Coal gas gives off enough carbon monoxide that if you should ever happen to feel like not being alive, you could just stick your head in the oven for a few minutes and painlessly drift away. However! In the '60s and '70s, the British government began phasing out carbon monoxide in favor of natural gas; and once those convenient little death-boxes were no longer in every home, the national suicide rate dropped by nearly a third and has mostly stayed there ever since. They call this simply, the British coal-gas story. The moral seems to be that sometimes suicide isn't the end of an elaborate plan: sometimes you're just having a really shitty day and hey look, there's the stove.
G.K. wrote Orthodoxy in 1908, the dawn of a century in which most of the great Rationalist philosophers were united in their prophecies of a coming golden age. Worked out great. I incline to the view that people will dispose of things they're taught to regard as disposable, and I would just as soon not make it any easier than necessary for my fellow men to murder themselves. That said, there's a cosmos of difference between discouraging a thing and discouraging the discussion of it. When I went to make a note in my phone about this blog post, the autocorrect kept trying to shunt me away from the S-word, favoring "suitcases," "diocese," and even, for Heaven's sake, "shivs," which honestly doesn't seem that much better. I get that this is a difficult thing to talk about, but you don't help someone with a problem by shushing them. Making suicide a horrible taboo topic is probably almost as destructive as "Doctor" Sarco tossing out nooses and razor blades like the Easter Beagle.
Catholic author Walker Percy, whose father and grandfather committed suicide, and who struggled with depression and suicidal impulses till his death by cancer, addresses this matter in Lost in the Cosmos. His contention is that rather than shying away from the thought of suicide, it may be productive to examine it as a serious option. Life may feel less like a trap if you know there's an exit, even if you've decided not to use it. He coins the term "ex-suicide" to describe someone who has weighed the option on its merits (not stating but leaving open the inference that he himself is such a one), and explains the potential liberation of doing so. "The difference between a non-suicide and an ex-suicide leaving the house for work, at eight o'clock on an ordinary morning: The non-suicide is a little traveling suck of care, sucking care with him from his past and being sucked toward care in the future. His breath is high in his chest. The ex-suicide opens his front door, sits down on his step, and laughs. Since he has the option of being dead, he has nothing to lose by being alive. It is good to be alive. He goes to work because he doesn't have to."
We cannot do evil that good might come of it. But all things work to the good, for those that love Him. Sarco's machine is just another abomination, but perhaps Our Lord can once again turn the Enemy's weapon against him. Perhaps, like a recovering alcoholic who keeps a sealed fifth of bourbon on his shelf, a recovering victim of despair might find a strange consolation in knowing that thanks to the dweller in the land down under, the coffin lid is just a mouse click away. And for those who overcome. . .
So this week's post is going to be a little different. I shan't elucidate the mighty verities of earth and heaven today, but shall address myself to a humbler and happier theme: what makes a good fight scene. Let us first cordially invite the sort of horrible awful Communists who don't enjoy watching people kick each other in the face to depart at once from this forum, and then those of us who are not dreadful, dreadful human beings may continue our disquisitions in peace.
After a long, strange life of applying my powerful brain to the analysis of cinematic action sequences, I have distilled their essence into four key points. Herewith:
1: Basics. The actual choreography and execution must be competent, preferably superlative.
2: Uniqueness. A really good fight should contain some distinguishing element that we've rarely or never seen.
3: Wisdom. A superior fight scene gives us a hero who's not just stronger or faster than the bad guy, but able to out-think him in some way. Victory should come about (at least in part) by the hero using strategy, environmental factors, or best of all somehow turning the enemy's own strength against him.
4: Context. Action movies have been insightfully compared to musicals, in that each "number" should be advancing the plot and/or developing the characters in some way. Otherwise they're just noise. Early in Rush Hour, for example, somebody clearly felt there'd been too much plot and not enough punching, and it was time for a random fight scene; and so, we get Jackie Chan walking into a black bar with Chris Tucker, hearing him address a patron as "my nigga," and repeating the phrase with no idea of what it means—whereupon the offended bartender attacks him, and Jackie Chan beats up everybody in the bar. The black bar. Into which he just walked and called one of the patrons the N-word. It's played for laughs, of course, but. . . yeesh. That's what happens when you have a fight just for the sake of a fight.
Let's look at a selection of great cinematic fight scenes and discuss, by the light of these criteria, wherein lies their greatness. I'd like to begin with Kiss of the Dragon, starring Jet Li.
1: Basics. Impeccable choreography and execution. Five stars.
2: Uniqueness. We've seen the glass-breaking theme, and the evil twins theme, but they're used in conjunction here in a fairly memorable way.
3: Wisdom. Firstly, Jet Li's use of the narrow desk space to stop the opponent's kicks. Genius at work. And secondly, his recall of the opponent's back-flipping drop-kick counter when someone catches his foot, and the use of that knowledge to predict his final attack and snap his neck. Dat's da good stuff.
4: Context. No difficulty here, this fight is the climax of the whole movie.
Just for grins, I'm going to include a fight between Jet Li and Dolph Lundgren from the first Expendables, in which Jet uses almost the exact same strategy of incorporating his environment and using the opponent's size against him, except with a slightly different outcome this time around. It's not anywhere near as good a fight, but I give it some points for expectation subversion.
All right, next up is Jason Statham in The Transporter, his first starring action role (after wing-manning Jet Li in the "who needs plots, we've got CGI"-era Highlander/Superman 3 mash-up, The One). This scene is affectionately referred to as The Grease Fight, because. . . well.
1: Basics. Goofy but solid. The flailing and brawling is pretty realistic, and meshes surprisingly well with the cartoony flash of Statham's fighting style. The grease makes it all believable somehow, even four spin kicks in a row all connecting with an opponent. Haven't seen anyone pull that shit since my man Mark in Only the Strong.
2: Uniqueness. I mean
3: Wisdom. This one's kind of cheating, because it's really the same as #2. But still, Statham shows great shrewdness in using the grease in this manner. Full marks.
4: Context. Acceptable. This fight happens towards the end of the movie, as he's gradually punching his way through the goons to rescue the girl with the face and beat up the guy that, you know, kicked an orphaned puppy or whatever the plot is. It doesn't develop Statham's character, because his character in no way changes from being a badass at the beginning to being a badass at the end. But it does move the story along, so. You know. Not a thinking man's film.
Next! I want to talk for a moment about Man of Tai Chi, starring Tiger Chen as Tiger Chen and Keanu Reeves as Evil Keanu Reeves. It's an absolutely amazingly written movie, in that it contains like fifteen different fights (admittedly, several of them occur in a montage), and every single one of them is visibly developing the protagonist's character. It's like a Dostoevsky novel, with tai chi taking the place of soul-shattering epiphanies as the vehicle for personal growth. It's also impressive because with only one exception, every fight is one on one and takes place in a handful of static environments, and yet the martial choreography is so damned spectacular that they're always visually interesting. Let's go to the clip:
1: Basics. Just. . . man! Five stars.
2: Uniqueness. To play fair here, I have to take off points in this category. There's no "gimmick" in this fight, it's just two guys hitting each other. The true strength of this scene, and of the movie as a whole, is that it shines despite (or perhaps because of) the stripped-down purity of the fighting. It doesn't need any gimmicks.
3: Wisdom. Again, just. . . man! Tiger ultimately triumphs because he's able to let go of his own ego (that's essentially his entire character arc), and tap into the sort of Zen inner emptiness from which the power of tai chi flows. And the reason he's finally able to do this is because Keanu himself gives him the prompting to do it—as a taunt. "You're nothing," his last insult before pulling the dishonorable knife, becomes the reminder that Tiger needs to accept his own smallness and become humble enough to ascend. Evil defeats itself.
4: Context. As I mentioned (oh, uh—spoilers?), this scene brings Tiger to the perfect conclusion of his hero's journey. It was Keanu's manipulation that watered the seeds of hubris already within him at the beginning, and in the end it's Keanu's own malice that helps Tiger to defeat himself and thus defeat his external foe as well. Just a magnificently solid character study, and some truly delightful martial artistry. Great flick. We love you, Keanu!
I mentioned Mark Dacascos earlier (star of Only the Strong, the greatest of all capoeira films). Bizarrely, he's probably best known as the back-flipping host of Iron Chef, but he's a phenomenal martial artist, and I have a creepy habit of writing roles into my novels that he could play if they ever become movies. Somehow, he's never quite broken into the action mainstream. For me and my cousin Jes, it was a dream come true to hear that he'd be co-starring with Jet Li, who brought along his buddy DMX from Romeo Must Die for the kung-fu/hip-hop fusion Cradle 2 The Grave. Good idea on paper; but sadly, the movie was pretty mediocre, and even Jet seems like he's phoning it in. Mark was easily the best part of that film, but I want to discuss a different Dacascos delivery: Drive. (Not to be confused with the Ryan Gosling film of the same name.)
This bad boy came out in 1997, just before The Matrix really popularized "wire-fu." It co-stars Kadeem Hardison and Brittany Murphy (requiescat in pace), and it's a surprisingly genuinely funny and likable buddy flick on top of being, man—just the most mind-blowingly awesome martial arts movie. I'm still puzzled that no one ever seems to have heard of this one. I highly recommend it, but let me also add a caveat: there are two versions of it, one being the director's cut which is like 15, 20 minutes longer. I strongly advise not watching that version, because it's all sad backstory stuff and unnecessary side-character deaths that just detract from the levity which is one of the movie's real strengths. So! That said, may I offer you some Dacascos with your tea?
1: Basics. Ahhhhhh, dat's da stuff. The speed and accuracy, the sense of power and impact, it's just damn good fighting. Now, in case you were confused by the ending, let me explain that the bad guy has a bionic implant from an evil corporation, and when he's about to get his ass kicked (right about the 3 minute mark), they suddenly dial up the implants to maximum. That's why he suddenly perks up, and also why his thoracic cavity short-circuits.
2: Uniqueness. It's pretty much par for the course these days, but back in the '90s it was hard to find quality wire-work outside of Hong Kong. I was a huge fan of the wire-heavy Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, but even as a dewy-eyed high-schooler, I never thought the hyperbolic swing-for-the-rafters choreography was anything but goofy and fun. The sheer quality of execution here is what sets this scene apart.
3: Wisdom. I guess we're a little lacking in this particular department. At the very beginning, when Mark is getting his ass handed to him, he busts out his escrima skills with the broken broom handle, basically just to jump-start his mojo and re-convince his own brain that he's not outmatched. Once he sees that the guy's not invincible, he drops the stick and goes head-to-head. Not necessarily the brightest move, but fighter's pride is fighter's pride. And of course, at the end, evil is technically defeated by its own evilness, although that mostly manifests as luck rather than cleverness on Mark's end.
4: Context. Yeah, okay, this movie is definitely not Dostoevsky. The plot is very much a peg on which to hang the action scenes. Let's move along.
Now I have to bring in the blades. If you love the Iliad, you probably don't love the movie Troy. Nor should you. It doggedly expurgates every divine or supernatural element from the narrative, gutting the unearthly sublimity which is the power and point of humanity's first epic. BUT. When it comes to the Hector/Achilles fight. . . All must be forgiven. This is, quite simply, one of The Great Fights. Extreme respect to both Pitt and Bana, who actually did the whole fight themselves. (Pitt even injured his Achilles tendon during the filming, which—hoo boy, no one does Dad jokes like God the Father.)
1: Basics. Outstanding.
2: Uniqueness. You don't see much spear-fighting in movies, and I love the way they slowly shed weapons as the fight continues until they're more brawling than fencing. But on the whole, there's no gimmick in this fight. Just amazing sword-art.
3: Wisdom. Debatable. Achilles dominates from beginning to end, and never needs any kind of trick or device beyond being a master tactician and the ultimate swordsman. However, I would argue that this scene triumphs by reversing the usual trope, because the entire point of it is that Hector knows all along that he can't win. There's never any doubt in anyone's mind how it's going to turn out, and yet Hector goes out to fight anyway because he's a man of honor.
4: Context. Crucial moment for the plot as a whole, and for Achilles as a man. It's his lowest point, and the moment that will bring about his final decision as to whether to become a soulless bully or a true warrior when Priam comes to ask for the body of his son.
I know what you're gonna say. This next one isn't technically a fight scene, it's a chase scene. And that may be. But it's sure as hell an action sequence, and I think it contains enough fighting to qualify, if only just. This is from Casino Royale.
1. Basics. I believe the actor that Bond is chasing is one of the people who invented parkour. So presumably, the parkour basics are solid. They sure look cool.
2. Uniqueness. The contrast in their styles is so distinctive. It's awesome and also hilarious, and does a lot to characterize Bond (which we'll revisit in point #4). Parkour guy is constantly flipping and squeezing through stuff, while Bond just flops around and smashes through walls. It's a very memorable antithesis of opponents. Also, Bond catching the gun and throwing it back at the guy, nearly causing him to fall to his death, is one of my all-time favorite movie moments.
3. Wisdom. Lots of little things. Bond keeps seeing that parkour guy is faster and slipperier than he is, and using his environment to compensate. Running up the extending crane shaft, breaking the release valve on the hydraulic lift, jumping onto the back of the van, &c. Clever and tenacious.
4. Context. The scene definitely advances the plot, which is always good; but more importantly, as we noted earlier, it does a great deal to introduce us to the new 007. (Remember, this movie was Craig's inauguration to the role.) It tells us he's powerful and brutal and not too concerned about collateral damage, in sharp contrast to the slick, wise-cracking Bonds of the past.
Next up. There's a pretty universal consensus that the second two Matrix movies (or Matrices) were a bit scattered and incoherent. I don't dissent. But the trilogy concludes with what, to my mind, remains the best flying fight ever put to film. Doing Man of Steel right ten years before Man of Steel did Man of Steel wrong, and bringing us something so fantastically close to a live-action Dragonball Z that I seriously tensed up for a Kamehameha Wave when I saw it for the first time—I give you The Matrix: Revolutions.
1: Basics. Holy shit, dude. Keanu throws one of the most beautiful spin kicks I've ever seen. The meshing of anti-gravity effects with martial arts is just poetry to watch.
2: Uniqueness. Unique not only in the era-creating special effects but in the emotional intensity of the scene. The music, the build-up, the history between these enemies—right down to that profoundly satisfying call-back to the "bring it" gesture from their subway fight, it engages you from the brain to the heart to the guts. (Or as the Oracle might put it, "through and through: balls to bones.")
3: Wisdom. This one is cause for contention. It's clear that Neo defeats Smith by accepting his own death, and that's a major win in this category. But on the other hand, it's not at all clear exactly why, or how, Smith killing (?) or transforming (?) Neo causes all the Smiths to die (?) or de-transform (?), and that kind of robs the climax of some of its intensity. It's not a moment when you want your audience going, "Wait, what?"
4: Context. Well. You don't get more definitive than this.
For our penultimate fight, we take a new and different turn. Like the Matrices, the Star Wars prequels are hotbeds of ambivalence in the fan base. All I can say is, it's gotta be difficult for anybody to do a follow-up to a trilogy that practically defined a generation. But let's put the live-action Star Wars aside, for today I bring you. . .
1: Basics. Yeah. Yeah, it's a cartoon. It's still bitchin', bro.
2: Uniqueness. Just a lot of nice little touches. The vine-swinging, the Force-pushing, the rapidly shifting backgrounds. I'm especially fond of the raindrops falling on the lightsabers.
3: Wisdom. Anakin doesn't exactly out-think Ventress, but he beats her by tapping into the Dark Side as well as the Light, so I guess you could say he out-feels her? That sounds weird.
4: Context. Definite win for character development. They're not really going for subtlety with the giant red moon overhead.
And finally. This is the fight scene upon which I predicated my fight scene criteria. This is the fight scene that brought wuxia to the West. This is the fight scene that shall never be surpassed among fight scenes. Ladies and gentlemen. I bring you Michelle Yeoh v. Zhang Ziyi: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
1: Basics. Unmatched. Period.
2: Uniqueness. The weapon-cutting! Yeoh goes through everything in the arsenal, only to have her armaments systematically severed by the Green Destiny. A singular motif indeed.
3: Wisdom. This is genius. Yeoh realizes that whatever weapon she picks up is going to get cut in half, and so she deliberately lets her final sword get split and uses that to get inside Zhang's guard. The older and wiser warrior prevails.
4: Context. Critical moment in their relationship. From here, everything spirals down to tragedy.
Well, folks, there it is. This has been a really fun post for me, and I surely hope you enjoyed it too. I wish you all a dolorous Advent, rife with fasts and ablutions. God bless, and I'll see you all next week. Peace!
St. Francis praised God for our Sister Death; yet Jesus Himself wept when He saw it. John Donne called Death a hateful slave, doomed to its own final death; yet the skull-tree of Golgotha became the great standing key to the Everlasting Mansions. Our dance with the scythe is ambivalent—cryptic, you might well say—but one of life's few bedrocks certitudes is that we'll dance that dance.
Ellie and I are preparing for a birth. Three more months. The kid will emerge from the safest, warmest place she'll ever know into a world of goblins, and then she'll live out her life and die. God willing, she'll bury the both of us first, and have kids of her own who will bury her and die. I know this all sounds horrifically morbid, but let's just look straight at it. Things are rough down here.
It's funny (ha) that we generally don't recall learning about death. There's a whole bit about that in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead: "There must have been a moment in childhood when it first occurred to you that you don't go on forever. It must have been shattering—stamped into one's memory. And yet I can't remember it. . . . We must be born with an intuition of mortality." I remember my first dead pet, Socks the gerbil; I remember my first dead relative, my God-father Bill, for whom I bore pall at the insufficient age of six. Requiescat in pace. But in neither case was I puzzled when told that they wouldn't be waking up. My awareness of the grave predates my memory of the alphabet or the praxis of tying my shoes.
Now, that might sound like some heavy shit for a little kid to be carrying around. But the truth is, as far back as I can recall, I've never been afraid of death. I assume it's because, praise God, I was taught from infancy to praise God. I've always known there's a better place I can get to when I die. (Note, can get to: not necessarily will. Gotta pick the right paths through the proving ground.) And it's not just that in Heaven you can have all the ice cream you want. It's that all the suffering, all the doubt and fear and misery and anguish and despair, will make sense there, will be explained and show their meaning and bear their fruit. Once there, we'll be able to look back and see that seventy years of wandering and toil were really all one great charge of wild horses and blazing swords. The last hacking breath of cancered lungs, the pain in the chest and the moment of dread, the asphalt hurtling up to meet us—whatever death we get, after we make it through, will reveal itself as the final battle in a long, long war. And then the revelry begins.
